Time in a Bottle

Jim Croce, was an American folk and rock songwriter from the 1970s. One of his most well-known songs he wrote and performed was Time in a Bottle. Jim wrote the song when he found out his wife Ingrid was expecting their first child in 1971, and the song was released in 1972. Tragically, in 1973, at the age of 30, Jim died in a plane crash, just two years after his son AJ was born.

The song reached #1 on the charts a few months after his death. The lyrics, though written to his wife and son, seemed foreshadowing of his life to come…here is the first verse…

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save everyday till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

Do you resonate with Jim’s lyrics? Time is so precious, yet it is also fleeting and we feel as though we are always running out of time. We plead for more time to accomplish tasks, spend with loved ones, and just simply live a long life. Even as you read this post, time is ticking away and there are a million other things you could be doing. Like the song says, you’d love to capture time in a bottle to save everyday for eternity.

Time is also a gift from God. Time allows us to heal from physical infirmities but also from emotional hurts. “Time heals all wounds” can be true in many circumstances. As we get further away from the past that contains all the emotional pains, our soul can heal and we can move on being sanctified by the lessons from God.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “He makes everything beautiful in its time.” Often we don’t want to wait for the time when everything will be beautiful. We want that to happen now. But God uses time to mold us into who He wants us to be. And that takes time. Otherwise, how would we know to depend on God in those hours of waiting?

It’s amazing to think that God, who is Himself timeless, created time in order to bless us. How sweet are times with our family and loved ones we have known through the years of our lives. God created us for relationships and community and the way we reap that blessing is with time. One day time will be no more and we will spend eternity with our timeless God. May we look back on our lives as we await that day and be able to thank Him for all the time well spent.

-Rose Booth