Making It Beautiful

The telephone may be the most prominent instrument that prompts us to drop the important things in life to take up the urgent.  But a fire that burns down one’s church just before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays has got to be near the top of the worst offenders list.  

A few years ago, Ipsos, a global marketing research firm, announced that almost everybody agrees with the statement, “There is never enough time in the day to get done what I want to get done.” Americans were among the most likely to agree, about 64-percent of us affirming it.

One day, when I was caught up in the tyranny of the urgent, I read these words from Jim Burn’s book “Addicted to God.”   His thoughts are gentle reminders of what really is important.  Perhaps you need a reminder during the tyranny of holiday shopping and decorating.  Burns writes:

• Life is too short to nurse grudges or hurt feelings.
• It’s too short to keep all your floors shiny.
• It’s too short to let a day pass without hugging your loved ones.
• It’s too short not to take a nap when you need one.
• It’s too short to put off Bible study.
• It’s too short to give importance to whether the towels match the bathroom.
• It’s too short to miss the call to worship on a Sunday morning.
• It’s too short to stay indoors on a crisp fall Saturday.
• It’s too short to read all the junk mail.
• It’s too short not to call or write your parents (or children) regularly.
• It’s too short to work at a job you hate.
• It’s too short not to stop and talk to children.
• It’s too short to forget to pray.
• It’s too short to put off improving our relationships with people that we love.
• Life is just too short—way to short—to settle for mediocrity!

Someone once observed that time was invented by God “to keep everything from happening at once.” Cynical Solomon, writing in Ecclesiastes, observed that God “has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 TNIV).

This Christmas Season, and looking ahead to 2008, don’t expect to have the time to do everything you want to do.  It may even be hard to get done what you have to do. But do resolve that you won’t let the urgent events get an upper hand over the important events in your life. That’s the first step you can take to making “everything beautiful in its time,” in your life.

Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers.  Letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness - everything coming together for good - will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.  

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7.

Joyfully in Christ, Greg : > )