Making Time Count

Sipping my coffee, my hair rivaling Einstein, I scanned over the devotional that had been sent to my email box.

"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."

I Thessalonians 4:11&12 (NIV)

"Great devotional," I thought as I hit the fwd button and without a thought. I picked up the worksheets, a battered day planner and textbooks and headed off to start another day of school, daily chores, going through mounds of email and mounds of laundry. Ironically, as I found some time later in the week to sit down and go through mounds of email as everyone slowly drifted to sleep, I reflected on a bible study that I had done that day and my mind drifted back to that
devotional. Going through email after email, I found it again and really sat down and read it. Word for word. Then I hung my head down.

"Wow," I thought to myself. How many times have I thought I was being busy and productive for myself, for our Heavenly Father, and my family, when honestly, I think I was just busy for the sake of filling in time or passing time.

I couldn't figure out why I would go to bed exhausted, my mind whirling on things I still had to do, when I suddenly realized...I still couldn't just let myself...rest. I think as women who are mothers, sisters, daughters, wives and co-workers, we are own worset enemies.

How often in our quest to be busy, to keep up with the Joneses, to be something to everyone, that we often forget to minister to the very people who are in need of us the most. Sometimes, keeping busy becomes no longer a praise, but a distraction. A distraction from not only from our friends and our family, but from our Heavenly Father. HE see it and often times, He finds ways to get our attention.

Ways that are not comfortable for us. His way of saying, "Slow down," even when we don't want to. Ever feel like there isn't enough time in the day? How did women do everything they needed to do before the advent of cell phones, email, and well, really, everything modern life has to offer and yet still found time for our Heavenly Father and for their family? Sometimes life really isn't about quantity. It really is about quality. It's sometimes about being honest with ourselves and asking ourselves if what we are doing is more about keeping busy and being distracted and less really about others and particularly for our Heavenly Father.

Do we want to be known for being the person whose schedule was so packed that we have to schedule in sleep or brushing our teeth, or do we want to be known as the person who, despite what was going on, put people and God before herself and that errand. The errand that really could wait another day. Putting aside that stack of paper that isn't going to anywhere, in exchange for a minute with the kids, the neighbor next door, or that friend we haven't talked to.The opportunities will be gone if we don't take the time to just....breathe.

Being busy didn't have to mean inaccessible or constantly juggling everything....Even the Proverbs 31 woman, probably knew when to delegate errands here and there instead of trying to take it all herself. The more we learn to work with others...to make time for others, the easier it is to get done the things we need to do. Instead of being imprinted in other people minds as that blur that goes in and out of their lives, we become more known as that person who, well, seem to be able to do everything, when it was really learning to cut out the un-necessary's and focus on the most important. Which reminds me....I have cookies burning in the oven...I better get to them before the next load of laundry is done!

Heavenly Father, I thank You when You strive to put speed bumps in my life, not because You think it's funny, but because You don't want me to pass up on the blessings that You give us. Thank You for always reminding us, to stop taking life so seriously all the time, and just make the time to live in Your word and to let You give us the strength and joy that work is supposed to give us and not the distraction and drudgery that we let work become in us.

Reflect:

• Do you often find yourself living life in a whirl that you find yourself forgetting to breathe?
• What are ways you can really sit down and figure out how to cut out the un-necessary to make room for the necessary in your life and to live the life God calls each and everyone of us to live in and through Him, so that the work we do, will be a blessing for and about others?
  
  
  

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