Ellie shares her thought for the week; what can you do in 80 hours?

I don’t know about you but at the moment it feels like the weeks are flying by especially as we’re in this Christmas season right now. By the time you’ve gone to work, you’ve got home, you’ve done extra activities, hung out with friends and then before you know it we’re back around to Monday and the new week is about to start.

We have a hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week and let’s say from that week you sleep for about eight hours a day. That means that gives you a hundred and twelve hours left just in the day when you’re awake. Out of those hours let’s say on average you work 32 hours a week, that gives you 80 hours left in your week when you’re not working sleeping or doing anything else. So that gives you 80 hours of free time.

Let me tell you what you could do with 80 hours of free time, this proves just how many hours that is.

• In 70 hours and 43 minutes, you can read the whole Bible from start to finish!
• You could also fly to Australia, fly back to England, back to Australia and then back to England again within 80 hours.
• You could watch the Barbie movie 40 times, or a football match 40 times.
• Depending on your pace, you could run a marathon 16 times all in 80 hours.

80 hours is such a massive amount of time that we have available to us and I wonder how we can spend this for God. In Matthew 28 verse 19, it says:

Go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.

Matthew 28:19

I want us to imagine today what could our workplace look like, what could reading look like, and what the world could look like if we use these 80 hours for the good of God. I wonder how much could change, how many people could we tell about God instead of watching TV or going on our phones? So maybe in these hours, we could spend them serving him. In Matthew 23 verse 11, it says

The greatest among you will be your servant.

Matthew 23:11

So as we’re ending this year and going into a new year I wonder how we can serve God during these 80 hours. It might look like practical serving, such as joining a rota at church, inviting people over for a meal or helping with your family at home. Or it could even be as simple as holding a door open for someone or complimenting them!

I want to encourage you this week to use those spare hours that we’ve got to serve one another. I’d love people to look at All Nations and say what a serving church they are.

Every week one of our members shares a short thought aiming to inspire you for the week. You can watch previous Thought For The Week videos by clicking here.