You shall not steal” (Ex. 20:15). In other words, don’t take what is not your own. Let’s talk about time in this regard. Time is fixed. It inexorably moves ahead. You cannot box up a quantity of time and save it for later. Yes, you can reserve time to take a vacation. In doing so, you plan ahead. When the time comes, which it will, you take your vacation. When the allotted time expires, you return to work.

The point is that you don’t control time; you control yourself. You don’t manage time; you manage yourself.

In your work at home, in school, in church, or in your profession, you have a certain amount of time at your disposal. When you work with others, you are under obligation to complete your assignments in the time allotted. You also allow others to complete their assignments in the time allotted to them. You should not take time away from them that is not yours. You shall not steal.

Quite a number of years ago, I was asked to do a short conference at a mission church. The pastor of the mother church asked if he might say a few words. His words turned out to be not a few. He consumed the entire time allotted for the meeting! I did not preach that evening as planned. Thus he took time not allotted to him. You shall not steal.

As a guest minister on another occasion, there were three other ministers on the program in the hour-long service. When it was my turn at the pulpit, it was 10 minutes to the end of the hour. Debating what to do, I read the Scriptures, preached my sermon, introduced the closing psalm, and pronounced the benediction a half hour after the appointed time.

Not too much of a problem, you may say. But we plan around announced service times. In this case, residents of a home for the elderly may have been deprived of a meal because of the insensitivity of the preacher. Perhaps the other ministers in this service overdid their parts and took time away from me. But I also took time away from congregants—time not my own. You shall not steal.

All of this applies to meetings—meetings that last too long, and take time away from other people like family members. Yes, all manner of board meetings take too long and rob time from other areas of life. Think of the times you have been in school board meetings, teachers meetings, staff meetings, or church meetings that churn on and on because of a lack of good management. The answer is therefore more planning and self-management. You shall not steal.

Sure, I’m also talking about common courtesy and common sense. But it’s deeper than this. It involves ethics. It involves God’s moral law.

Early in my tenure at the seminary, a student preacher not only took his allotted 20 minutes in chapel, he extended his sermon for an additional 20 minutes. This took us well into the following class period. The student did not seem to grasp what he had done. “I don’t understand,” he said. “When I preached this sermon in church, it took an hour, but I cut it back 20 minutes!”

Significantly enough, the topic of the sermon was ethics. However, our student failed to grasp that he robbed fellow students and professors of a significant amount of their class time. You shall not steal. Sadly, I too am guilty of robbing time. Are you?