Time Enough

Time management is not my strongest suit. If I cared to apply to the Guinness Book of World Records, I'd stand a good chance of earning a listing for "impossibly cluttered calendars and resultant frustration levels."

Not that I don't understand--in theory--the concept of prioritizing your list, doing the most important things first, and being willing to live without the rest. The trouble is that the only real priority my natural mindset believes in is "missing out on nothing"--which can make it pretty tough to hit the point of satisfaction when the world keeps bombarding you with new ideas, suggestions, and requests.

Is it just me, or does the whole concept of "things to do" mutate once you graduate from college--from a footpath into a flash flood, from an orderly grade-by-grade, test-by-test progression into a thousand square miles of tasks scattered at random and stretching far beyond what the eye can see?

Perhaps it's time to look with new eyes at the words of Jesus from Matthew 6:33: "Seek first [God's] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." On first reading this in context, "all these things" we are tempted to fret about seems to refer only to material needs. But might it also refer to our time--that much-valued treasure that everyone moans about being short on, that we seem to chase at more consistently frantic pace than anything else, that we worry and fret about and become obsessed with "saving" and try to store like spare food in granaries?

Those of us who "never have enough time for anything"--even "God's work"--may need to consider whether we're trying to do everything on our own schedule instead of His.

Higher, higher, ever higher,
Do the goals we seek retreat;
Farther, farther, ever farther,
Back we fall from lists complete;
Faster, faster, ever faster,
Come life's struggles, tasks, and fuss:
Will we never reach the day of
Having time enough for us?

Listen, brother; listen, sister--
All of time is in God's hands;
Nothing that this world can muster
Can delay His holy plans.
Never is He in a hurry,
Never is He running late:
Time enough He gives His children
For the things He counts as great!

Slow your pace and cease your hurry:
Pause and take the time to hear
How He wants to set your schedule;
He will make your focus clear.
We will never find the time for
All the world's unending "stuff,"
But to seek God's blessed Kingdom,
There is always time enough!