Love = Time

In October 2010, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, said that "In family relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e, time." Apparently, he may have been quoting, or at least paraphrasing other thinkers like Zig Ziglar, Mac Anderson, and Lance Wubbels, who said "To a child love is spelled T-I-M-E," but I've found that this is true for more than just children, and it's true for more than just our families.

Everyone needs love, and that love is often expressed through our use of time. When we serve others, we spend time serving others. When we give others gifts, we spend time buying, making, or preparing those gifts, after having spent time earning the money to pay for the gift or the materials to make it. And of course, when we spend time with others, we are spending time to be there for them.

Unfortunately, while our love for others may be abundant, our time sometimes is not. We only have so much time in any given day, so there's only so much time we can spend loving others. This can be a challenge when people need and/or deserve more love than we currently have time to give them. When this happens, all we can really do is try to determine who needs our love and time the most at that moment and do the best we can to give those who need our love as much love as we have time to give them. That may not be as much love as they need or deserve, but it's the best we can do, so it'll have to be good enough.

It's unfortunate that love takes time, and our time is limited, thus limiting the amount of love we can give. It is my hope and prayer that we can learn to spend or time wisely and that God will magnify our efforts to give others the love they need in whatever time we have. We may not always have the amount of time we want, but God can help us use it to express a great deal of love.