Time, time, time! There never seems to be enough time. . .particularly to really invest in the truly important things in our lives. I often hear Christians moan, “I know I should spend time with God each day, but there never seems to be enough time.” The surprising thing is that when we force ourselves to do the important things first, there will often be a shocking amount time left for the rest. How does that work? Here’s a little puzzle that may help:
Imagine three glass jars: the first contains rice, the second contains ping pong balls, and the third is completely empty. The actual volume of the empty jar is just enough to contain the volume of both the ping pong balls and the rice combined. The challenge is to make them both fit. It you put the rice in first, it will leave a flat surface and not enough space above it for the ping pong balls. But if you put the ping pong balls in first, when you pour in the rice it will flow
around the balls and completely fill the jar. The solution: big things first, little things second.The truly important things in our lives are like the ping pong balls and the secondary things that consume our time and attention, are like the rice. If we try to check off the nagging, urgent things first, there will never be enough time and energy left over for the truly important ones. We must do the important things first, and let the urgencies flow around them, like the rice around the ping pong balls. When do that, things fall into place. And we often find that many of the urgencies that were ready to gobble up all of our time didn’t really have to be done at all!
But there’s another factor in this equation: our sense of urgency.
Years ago, President Dwight Eisenhower tried a little exercise in self-organization. As the Supreme Allied Commander for WWII and then the President of the United States, his daily schedule was impossibly maxed-out. As he struggled to manage his time, he noticed that a sense of urgency was significant ingredient. The urgent things that cried out for immediate attention always seemed to get done first. So for a period of time he kept two tablets with him throughout each day. One tablet was titled: “Urgent Things” and the other tablet was title: “Important Things.” When a task occurred to him, if it was urgent he wrote it down on the “Urgent” tablet and if it was important, he wrote it on the “Import” tablet. But here’s the important thing: each item could be entered into one or both tablets. After some time he reviewed the results. He was amazed to discover that there was almost no overlap; it was an almost total reverse correlation. Essentially none of the urgent items were important, and none of the important items were urgent. That left him with only one option: He had to make himself do the important items first, even in the face of all of the urgencies that were crying out for his immediate attention. If he didn’t, the truly important items would never get done. Let’s apply that observation to our lives as Christians.
Nothing is of greater value than to daily allocate a block of quality time to spend in private with the Living God—nothing! We clearly see this in Jesus’ own life. The problem is our sense of urgency. We seldom feel the same sense of urgency for our time with God as we do for getting to work on time, paying our bills, filing our income tax, or keeping lunch appointments. Like President Eisenhower we must deliberately set aside the feelings of urgency and then force ourselves to block out quality time with God. . . even if it means actually writing our appointments with God into our daily calendar. If we don’t, the mundane will crowd out the eternal. Does it seem wise to let that happen? How do you think it seems to your God?