MAKING UP FOR THE WASTED TIME

"There are three things that never return: the spent arrow, the spoken word and the lost opportunity." (Ancient Persian Proverb)

"The dawn does not come twice to waken a man." (Proverb of Sleepy African)

"Youth once gone is gone. Deeds, let escape, are never to be done. Nature has time, may mend mistakes, she knows occasion may recur ... I must perish once and perish utterly." (Browning)

Each moment wasted means that life's precious treasures are diminished while the price for them becomes higher.

Opportunities both rise in price and grow fewer everytime we refuse to make use of them.

The passions and bad habits we refuse to tame today will be harder to conquer tomorrow should we leave the hours of today unimproved.

Time forgets new links and the slavery becomes more harsh.

Time opens opportunities.

The time for probation was paid; the time of opportunity had come.

"There is a tide in the affairs of man which taken at flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries." (Shakespeare)

Though time is too precious to waste, it must never be thought that what was lost is irretrievable. Once the Divine is introduced, then comes the opportunity to make up for the losses.

God is the God of the second chance.

... Peter denied, but he had the second chance in which to become as solid as as rock.

... Jonah, who refused to accept a mission, was given a second chance and saved Babylon.

... Second birth means being born again, all that went before is not held against us.

... The good thief on the right side of the Lord on Calvary wasted a human life, but in accepting pardon won eternal life.

No wasted life need to be final.

We may close the door on opportunity, but divinity is still on the other side knocking, His hands full of gifts.