One thing people often ask me is where do I find the time to do all the things I do in my neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago? I often start my day at 5 a.m.

I have a congregation to minister to. I oversee my Project H.O.O.D. non-profit and its ever-growing number of programs. I’m currently building a $40 million economic and leadership community center directly across the street from my church. I also counsel young couples, offer companionship to the elderly, mentor young minds, and help strivers with employment or political connections. And there are the dreaded phone calls that interrupt my day with the bad news that someone was hurt or killed by violence. Not to mention that I have my own family to tend to.

By the time I go to bed, the clock is near midnight — if I’m lucky.

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I feel like I have no time and yet I find the time. We all have the same 24 hours to the day. The way I have learned to approach time can be defined by one word: existence. How do we choose to be in the moment, how do we choose to live in the moment, what do we do with every breath that we take?

Time is a gift from God and He will one day hold us accountable for how we choose to exist on this Earth. He will hold us accountable because, you see, time is a choice, it is a choice every living moment, and it is on us how we utilize this precious gift from above.

I did not always understand time the way I do now. I often complained that I did not have enough time for all the things on my plate. Consequently, things slipped, I missed crucial moments, and I fell further and further behind. I burned out. And you know what? The duties and obligations only continued to accumulate, waiting for me to tend to them.

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I see a lot of this same burnout in my congregation. But you know what I also see in them that I saw in my earlier self: bad habits, bad choices, bad ways of existing. I also see how they blame The Man and everything under the sun for their lack of time, for their weariness. They do that while they hold a smartphone in their hand, the worst timewaster ever to come into existence.

Pastor Corey Brooks speaks on Day 2 of the Republican National Convention (RNC), at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S., July 16, 2024.  (REUTERS/Brian Snyder)

I ask them what their purpose in life is. What are their ambitions? Their dreams? I ask them these questions to center them, to return them to who they are at their core — because when you waste time or lose time, you drift away from yourself. 

How you spend time is you, who you are.

I tell them that they have the same time that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had to write the "I Have a Dream" speech, the same time it took to write the "Declaration of Independence," the same time it took for Michael Jackson to perfect the moonwalk, the same time it took Walter Payton to nourish his talent, the same time it took to put the first man on the moon, and so on.

We know of all these accomplishments because individuals chose to put their time in, to put the work in — often without guarantees— and look at what they accomplished. Their works live on from time immemorial.

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This is the simple lesson I’ve learned as I grow older — every moment I spend awake must be worthy of my existence on this Earth. How I spend my time bettering things around me because of my earthly reward. 

There are those who will complain that we have more distractions than ever, especially that devil of a smartphone. But a man with a purpose is not so easily distracted because he has his calling on this Earth, his reason for existing. And why would anyone resist this tremendous gift from above?

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