Object Lesson on Time - Hourglass
Use this object lesson on time to teach kids how to manage their schedules, and put God at the center of it all.
Object Needed: Hourglass
Big Idea: Don't waste the time God has given you.
We've included the text for this object lesson below and we even recorded a video to help give you ideas for how to teach it. Enjoy watching!
Time Object Lesson Script
Does anyone know what this is? Do any of you have one of these in your home? The hourglass is kind of an out of date technology. It's not good for telling time, but it is good for timed activities. The most common use of an hourglass these days is in games like Cranium. When you use the hourglass to limit the time, players have to draw or guess. Cranium is not the only game with a timer of sorts.
In college and pro basketball, they use a shot clock to limit the amount of time a team can hold the ball without trying to score. This keeps the team from holding onto the ball and slowing the game down. Same goes for the play clock in football. As soon as the play is whistled dead, they start the clock and give the offense a limited amount of time to get set, and run the next play. Shot clocks, hour glasses, and timers are unrelenting. They keep moving, even though we want to stop and take a breath. There's no turning the clock back or flipping the hourglass over. You play, you finish, and the game moves on. Basketball and football players going to make the most of their time and not waste it, if they want to win.
There's no shot clock in real life; not normally anyway. It's a shame because maybe if we had a ticking clock to remind us of time that's passing, we wouldn't waste so much of it. We spend time on the computer and in front of the TV that could be spent in the Word. We spend time goofing off instead of ministering to others. And once that time is gone, we will never have it to give again. My prayer for you today, is that you will live as if you had an hourglass in front of you.
You only have so much time, and God wants you to make the most of it. There's a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to cry in, a time to laugh. Don't waste this precious gift that God has given you.