Stealing Time
THE THEIF IN THE MIRROR
Most burglars hide beneath the cloak of darkness, prowling in the shadows like rats in a pantry. But the thief living within us is far more cunning—he thrives in the light of day. He sits beside us at breakfast, sipping our self-same coffee and he lies down with us on our pillow in the evening. That crook is not a covert stranger slipping in through an unlocked window in the dead of night; he is the man looking back at you in the mirror.
And maybe you would retort: “But I aint no thief,” and in one sense you could be quite right since you do not have any criminal charges on your record. Yet in another, and perhaps more ghastly way, you would be very very wrong. You see, we curse the man who smashes store windows and plunders a local Target—and rightly so, for that kind of behavior is truly repugnant. But we are also strangely gentle on ourselves when we waste time and resources that could have been given in the service of God.
And you might say to me: “How is this stealing?” Well, the answer lies in who our time belongs to. If I am the master of my own universe, and all time and space belong to me, then I can do with my time whatever I please. But, if “my” time belongs to someone else then I am accountable to them on how I use it. And since our time is owned by the infinitely wise and all powerful God, given to us as a gift to steward for His glory, then when I waste God’s time on things that do not matter, in a very important sense I am stealing from Him.
And we all do this. We rob Him of prayer in the morning by sleeping in instead of going to the throne of grace. We commit grand larcerny in worship by scrolling endlessly on YouTube to drown out our boredom instead of taking our passions to God in praise. We steal our best service away from God by chasing a million comforts instead of giving God all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. And we become thieves in matters of devotion, by filling every quiet space of our life with a litany tasks, entertainments, food, drink, and a laundry list of responsibilities so that (at least we claim) we have no time left to serve our God. Even in the matter of money, we believe our money belongs to us, and cannot possibly consider that our lack of generosity to His Kingdom, while we are perfectly happy to fund our own, is yet another kind of larceny from God (Mal. ?) It is as the Grinch once said, our lives are filled with: “all the noise, noise, noise, noise, noise!” And it is that noise that makes us burglars of time. We take the time He gave us to steward for His glory and we foolishly spend it on ourselves and that is a kind of stealing that we rarely consider or repent of.
When it comes to defining the act of stealing, the Eighth Commandment says, “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15). Simple enough—until you realize that the line between what’s mine and what’s yours doesn’t begin with us at all. Scripture insists that ownership starts and ends with God. “The earth is the LORD’s, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it” (Psalm 24:1). “Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory… indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth” (1 Chronicles 29:11). Everything in our pockets, our houses, our lungs, and our calendars already bears His name. Which means theft is not merely taking from another person—it is mishandling what belongs to the King. And Paul drives the point home: “You are not your own; you were bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). Every possession, every minute, every breath is borrowed. To steal, in any form, is to pretend the borrowed is ours.
This truth is even clearer in our shared confessional heritage. The Westminster Larger Catechism presses this law into our ribs, teaching that it requires the “lawful procuring and furthering of the wealth and outward estate of others and ourselves.” God expects fruit, not merely the absence of theft. He wants builders, not loiterers—men and women who turn five talents into ten, who till the soil of their short lives until it yields glory. Anything less is theft with clean hands.
THE BURIED TALENT PRINCIPLE
If the ownership of everything belongs God, then stewardship is the measure of how we care for God’s things. And to test that, Christ gave us the parable of the talents, from which we derive the following principle.
The parable is simple: a master entrusts three of his servants with a portion of his treasure, expecting them to multiply it while he is away on a journey (Matthew 25:14–30). When he returns, he has found that two of them have obeyed him, while the other refused. And here is where things get interesting, because the third servant was severely punished for his disobedience, and that was not from stealing the master’s treasure for himself. He was punished because he did nothing with it. He buried the coin, patted the dirt, and thought that he was being wise so that he didn’t not lose the money. But obedience in this situation was not about maintaining what he was given, but in multiplying it. So, when the master returns, that third servant is excoriated for simply having a maintenance mentality instead of laboring for multiplication. Sure, he gave back all of the money he was given, but that was not good enough. Subsequently, he was treated as a thief, because in his stupidity, he robbed his master of all of the interest he could have made in the future if he had put the money to use. Think about that, he was treated as a thief because of the future treasures he missed out on because of his own negligence and cowardice. This is why he was called a “wicked and lazy slave.”
For instance, if the Lord has given you the gift of leadership, but you choose comfort over calling because leadership brings all kinds of pressures and criticisms, then you are stealing from the future you could have built through apathy today. You robbed a family, a church, or a community of the stability you could have and were meant to provide. You buried a talent.
Suppose God has given you wealth, but you treat it like insurance instead of ammunition. You stockpile what was meant to be scattered. You give when it’s convenient, never when it costs. And in doing so, you’ve choked off the streams of mercy your money was meant to fund—the Kingdom that could have advanced, the missionaries who could have gone, churches that could have been planted.
Or perhaps you are a mother called to nurture hearts and build a home for Christ’s glory, but you’ve surrendered your best hours to the hypnotic hum of a screen and left your children to be discipled by the television. You have buried your influence in the dirt of distraction.
Maybe you’re a father with the strength to disciple your household, but you let exhaustion be your excuse. You clock out spiritually the moment you step through the door, letting ESPN or your phone raise the next generation instead of you. You’ve buried your strength in the shallow grave of self-indulgence.
Every time we trade eternal fruit for temporary ease, every time we choose to maintain rather than multiply, every time we could have given more, worked harder, but didn’t for some foolish reason, we are not just wasting—we are stealing. The unplanted seed is theft of an unrealized future harvest. The unspoken gospel is theft from the soul who might have believed through your declaration. The undone duty is theft from the glory that could have been rendered to Christ if we had simply worked harder, longer, and with greater love.
This sin doesn’t come wearing horns; it comes dressed in virtue. It sounds responsible, reasonable, even mature. We call it caution, balance, or “taking a season to rest.” We tell ourselves we’re protecting our families, guarding our boundaries, or waiting for a better time. But the truth is uglier: the talent is still buried, and God is still waiting for the yield. What we label prudence is often fear in disguise. What we call margin is sometimes indifference. What we baptize as self-care is often self-worship. We are covering divine opportunities with the dirt of convenience, comfort, and unbelief—and then patting the mound, calling it faithfulness.
That’s what makes the Buried Talent Principle so haunting: you can be a thief while sitting still. You can rob God by simply ignoring what He’s placed in your hands. We waste afternoons rehearsing old offenses, nights devouring noise, weekends worshiping comfort. We scroll while our children grow. We claim we’re too busy to serve while burning hours on trivialities. We tell ourselves we’re drained, but it’s not fatigue—it’s mismanagement. We’ve poured our best into our own self care and left the precious scraps for our Master.
Proverbs says, “The sluggard is brother to him who destroys” (Proverbs 18:9). That’s the biblical shorthand for the Buried Talent Principle: to waste what God gives is to vandalize His image in you. Every tick of the clock testifies against us. Every idle moment is an unspoken confession that we believe God’s mission can wait.
But it can’t. Eternity is already moving. The Kingdom does not pause while we scroll. The Master has entrusted His wealth to us—time, breath, gifts, influence, years—and He will return to see what we have done with it.
REDEEMING THE TIME
The Gospel begins where thieves are caught and cry out for mercy. Christ came for robbers like us—the ones who squandered their hours, wasted their gifts, and mortgaged eternity for moments of ease. Yet He, the only sinless man, never wasted a breath. His every second sang with obedience. His every step struck the serpent’s skull. He healed when He was weary, prayed when He was hunted, labored while others slept. Even His dying was no delay—He bought eternity in six nailed hours, ransoming rebels who could not manage a single faithful day.
He did not come merely to forgive our theft of time; He came to restore the clock itself. The curse that rusted Eden’s gears and made our days slip through our fingers—He reversed it. By His resurrection, He has reclaimed the minutes, sanctified the hours, and bent history toward glory. The Spirit He poured out now fills our empty calendars with divine purpose, turning ordinary work into worship, wasted years into fields ripe for harvest, fleeting days into seeds of everlasting joy.
So repent—and rise. Shake the dust from your buried talents. Cut the cords of your distractions. Look up from the glowing idols in your hands and see the King who still says, “Work while it is day; the night is coming when no man can work.”
You cannot unsin yesterday, but you can offer Him tomorrow. You cannot rewind time, but you can redeem it. Give Him your next hour, your next breath, your next act of love. Lay them on the altar, and watch Him multiply them into glory.
For time itself now bows to Jesus Christ. The Lord of the Sabbath reigns over the seconds, and every tick belongs to Him. The days you once buried can bloom again beneath His grace.
The clock you have stolen still beats in mercy.
Return it to its Maker.
Pour out your life for the One who poured out His for you.
