You know friends, I feel like recently God has placed life and living on my heart. As I've carefully planned each part of my jam-packed days, filling every hour with deadlines to meet and requirements to fulfill. Cramming each minute with productivity and scheduling every second according to what I feel should be accomplished. I've grown so tired, so worn down, and very stressed. I've forgotten how to truly live. How to be in the moment, outside of a schedule, and outside of time. Through it all, I've been constantly reminded of my humanness, my mortality, and the mortality of this life.
In a vanishing world, a busy schedule can sometimes feel like the only constant. Without Christ, our vanishing life is a scary thing, but for me knowing that sorrow, fear, and pain will one day be abolished into eternal glory is the very thing that keeps me breathing.
We do not drop from the heavens with black bars on our wrist, representing our lives and how many chances at this life we have. We are not born knowing our days, and we do not number them ourselves. One moment we could be here the next we may not. I don't mean that to frighten you, I say it because it is true. Just like we do not know our dying day, we are not given the day of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ's coming. We have been living in the end times since His ascension and could be living in them for thousands of years more, but we do not know.
"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know when the master of the house will return-whether in the evening, at midnight, when the rooster crows, or in the morning. Otherwise, he may arrive without notice and find you sleeping. And what I say to you I say to everyone: Keep watch!" (Mark 13:36)
In the Gospel of Mark, we are given a beautiful illustration and warning. We are told not to sleep lest the master of the house return and find us that way. The meaning of this parable may confuse you, so let me explain. Jesus is speaking in a spiritual sense, here. He does not mean you should literally never sleep, lest he comes back at the hour that you are resting. He is inferring to being spiritually asleep. Friends, this is so convicting! We live in a world so far removed from persecution and reliance on God. We live in a culture so wrapped up in vulgarity, money, and me me me! Instead of looking for the good in people, we chose to be negative. Instead of serving others, we are told to make others serve us. Instead of slowing our pace and recognizing God, we speed it up so we won't have to face our Maker and, in turn, won't be forced to face our sin and our humanness. We are told we must be beautiful, fake, wrapped up in all the newest trends.
We are determined to fight for others' attention with anything, rather than to gain it with everything.
We have thrown out modesty, truthfulness, godliness, and the list goes on.
"8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you." (Philippians 4:4-9)
Our world has thrown these things out. The qualities the Lord deems as beautiful, righteous, and pure are scorned for being just that. This makes the struggle all the harder for us. We are spoiled and intoxicated here in our bubble of false security. We do not know what it is like to be threatened with death for our beliefs, our greatest threat is relying too much on our culture's acceptance. In a way, it is more deadly than the first. If we have such a firm faith that we are willing to die for it, we will relish in eternal glory. Nothing in heaven and earth could touch us. Unfortunately, many people in our culture have never been exposed to the Gospel, and those who have, have never been taught to study it and are biblically illiterate. Those who know how to study The Word get so wrapped up in the rush of life that they often let their time with God fall to the bottom of their to-do list. I know I'm certainly guilty of this.
The other night as I was lying in bed, tossing and turning sleeplessly, my worn-out mind racing through my to-do list, checking boxes, and seeing what was left to complete. Finally, I switched on my light and grabbed the nearest scrap of paper and, starting at six a.m., hastily scheduled my day. Strictly using every minute of my precious time. As I laid my day out in pencil, a thought came to me, what if I wasn't able to stick to the strict schedule and I fell behind and had to erase, rewrite, and retime some of my plans? Well, that was why I laid out my strategy in pencil so that I had the freedom to flex my agenda. The thought made panic rise in my chest, for it stoked the fear that I wouldn't get things done in time to meet my swiftly approaching deadlines, but I was forced to stop as words echoed through my head.
"Write your plans in pencil, not so you can retime them if something goes wrong, but so you can live in the moment for me. So you can make room for the work of the Holy Spirit. So you can learn how to truly live. Surrender your time to me."
I thought about that for a moment and was struck by its profundity. This life is temporary. Our schedules will not be the same forever. Our days will come and go, but what will stay with us will be the time we dedicated to God and the flexibility we allowed in our schedule to make room for and value others above our agendas.
The work that changes lives is not that of our perfect timing, but that of the Holy Spirit's.
Now don't get me wrong, we must fulfill our commitments, that's part of loving and honoring people, and we must do our best with the work we have been given, but that includes God's work. We must not let our job, schooling, or any other commitments dictate how much time we spend with the Lord, our mood, or how we treat others. We must not let the demands of culture, and this fleeting life become more important than our Creator, Saviour, Father, and Friend. When we take our days captive and try to manage time ourselves, we will grow frustrated because life happens. People fail us. The world fails us. We fail us. That is just the way it is, but maybe we could still find joy through it. Perhaps if we clung to God and gave him our time and said, "Here, Lord, my life is short, my time here just a small dot in eternity, use me. My life is yours," we would find the fulfillment we seek.
I've been really convicted of this recently, and I felt I should share. Maybe we can work on this together. Perhaps we can both strive to release the tight hold we have on our lives and surrender our time to God, for that would be the best management of it. Surrender our thoughts to God and dive deep into the Scriptures, so we are ready when our time comes. I believe in doing so, we will find the most fulfillment and the most productivity. Friends, it is more important to know God, know the Bible, love people, and spread the Gospel than to gain the world and lose your soul (Mark 8:36).
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