Edith Schaeffer On Time

Edith Schaeffer (1914-2013, was a Christian author and co-founder of L'Abri (meaning "shelter"), an evangelical Christian student ministry, with her husband Francis Schaeffer in 1955.   Edith Schaeffer's 1969 book L'Abri told the story of how she and her family grew the L'Abri work from conversations with students at their kitchen table into an international ministry.

In the first chapter I ran across a paragraph that struck me:

     The most precious thing a human being has to give is time.  There is so very little of it, after all, in a life.  Minutes in an hour, hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a year, years in a life.  It all goes so swiftly!  And what has been done with it?  A burning zeal to do something in the realm of art, of music, of other creative fields, or science, of medicine, of exploration, of just plain living -- yet how much time is there to develop in one's chosen field and to accomplish anything that makes even a smudge of a difference?  When one feels one has found something far more important than how to utilise a lifetime with some purpose, when one feels one has found an open door to eternity with endless time to spend and an unending purpose to spend it for, when one is certain one is in communication with the Person who makes all this possible, then the burning still is there . . . but it is in a desire to share this certainty.

Also, from Chapter 3:

     Just before our return something happened which was a thread which would appear several times in the weaving of our lives in the next years.  That "something" was a person by the name of Baroness von Dumreicher, who was staying with some young people in Chalet Bijou.  A German baroness, she had spent forty years of her life in Egypt, and, as she said, they were years spent in light social pleasures. Many tragic things happened to different members of her family, and last of all her husband was killed, and she lost all her earthly possessions.  She was living in Switzerland on money given her by a nephew, but it made her feel like a pauper.  Troubled in her thoughts about the present and the future, she had heard of us, and asked us to visit her.  Her first and most important desire was to know whether there was any way she could be assured that her sins would be forgiven.  That there was an existing God, she had no doubt, but she feared death, and looked back on an empty life, filled with what she honestly felt was sin -- and knew that was not much "time left to make up for it."  With her earphone held out eagerly to catch every word she came step by step into that happy assurance which the Bible gives to believers, and which is not based on works which men must have time to do, but upon something that has been done for them by the Son of God.  It is really an exciting thing to have a message like this for the world.  If "eternal life" depended on what a person had time left to do, or strength to do, or will-power to do, or emotions to feel, or talent to accomplish, or brilliance to understand, or money to pay for, or family line or merit, how sad a thing it would be to say to such an eager searching question: "Sorry, but this is not for you."
     As it was, the baroness became a Christian, and was as excited as a child finding hidden treasure.