Redeeming Time

Tonight my children were finishing dinner, but I was already done.
It meant I had to wait.
I could start those dishes, though.
Maybe I could finish before they were done.
I began thinking about that phrase 'redeeming the time'.
It's always been a little poetic sounding to me.
Sort of mysterious.
How do I do it?

Is it simply using the dead spaces to get something worthwhile done?
While I am waiting for them to finish chewing, washing a plate or two?
When I had a slower internet connection,
I spent a lot of time waiting for pages to load.
So I kept my knitting or a book with me.
I could knit one sock needle's worth of stitches minimum
at every slow loading page.
You can get a lot of sock knitting done twelve stitches at a time.
Sometimes I left it on the front seat of my car,
and when I got stuck at the State Street light (the longest one in town),
I enjoyed every waiting second of it.
I found myself looking forward to waiting.
Waiting for the doctor to call me in to see him?
Knit.
Being a passenger in a car trip to North Carolina?
I can knit a whole sock there, and a whole sock back.
It's meditative.

Is it as simple as that, Lord?
Occupying until You come?
Doing good with hands that have nothing to do for a bit?
In a worthless time, do something worthy.
My Grandma could not sit down to visit or watch a movie with us
without gathering her crocheting first, so her hands were busy.
You might as well do somethin' while you're doin' nothin'.

Must you spend a half hour scrubbing dishes?
Put a missionary's card up where you'll see it,
and you can pray for them while you work.
Two minutes brushing your teeth day and night?
A scripture to meditate on taped to the mirror redeems time.
My sister always puts a teaching on to listen to as she prepares dinner.
Are you often trapped in a chair, nursing a baby?
Maybe you can read three sentences of the scripture
which you've been struggling to fit in.
If not, feeding His lambs is redemptive in itself, anyway.

Is this a season of grief for you?
Someone else is grieving, too.
Who will pray with more empathy than you will for them?