The other day I was making dinner in the kitchen as Derek held a phone conversation with his grandfather, my dad. Talking to grandpa is a rare treat and I heard Derek's little voice cheerfully chatting, filled with excitement. Suddenly Derek paused and asked a serious question:
"Grandpa, what do you like to do for fun? Do you like to play with toys or do you just like to get drinks and type all the time?"
Ouch.
Guess who he was describing with that "get drinks and type all the time" line? Bad dad alert in 3...2...1! Perhaps my son was being a little unfair, as typing is part of the way food gets put on his table and those Diet Mountain Dews help fuel the brain cells, but still I made a mental note to myself: "Play more with the kid."
Time management is one of the biggest challenges we face in the modern age. Everything moves faster than it used to. Where once you might have had six basic tasks in your day now it seems like you have 100, plus 32 more you're not going to get to, and those 132 things change from day to day. It's easy to get submerged in our checklists of things to do, happy that we're accomplishing so many tasks. We don't stop to think whether viewing life as a set of tasks is the best approach! It's all too easy to say, "I visited three people today, started on Sunday's sermon, met with the youth, cooked dinner, mowed the lawn, posted to the blog, took out the garbage, and fed the cats. Look how much I accomplished!" You don't realize that to little eyes that big heap of tasks all added up to, "Every moment dad was actually home he typed." If other tasks dominate the two hours where "daddy's home time" and "Derek's awake time" intersect, was this day really a success no matter how many things I got done or how well I did them? More to the point, am I managing my time and my list or is it managing me and, by extension, everyone who loves me?
Sometimes it's OK to be busy every moment of the day. Derek just has to wait on some days. Sometimes it's not OK. The point isn't that one or the other is better. Rather I'm wondering how long it's been since I even bothered to examine the issue.
If we don't even bother to question these things you know we're not bothering to ask God for help with them. Most often we pray about tasks or events. "Dear God, help me do this right" or "Dear God, help this situation I need to face" or even "Dear God, help me get through all the things I need to do today". It's like we're driving down the road and asking God to help us fill the gas tank and keep the car running. That's well and good, but every once in a while shouldn't we ask him whether we're actually on the right road? Fuel and repairs don't help when they're not getting us where we need to be. Your car's in tip-top shape, you negotiated every part of the road perfectly, and by virtue of all that great driving you're now on the opposite end of the country from where you needed to be. That, my friends, would be the definition of a "mixed blessing".
Asking God to help us make the best, most faithful, most holy use of our time is a way of making sure we're on the right road. Few of us do everything we need to do, let alone want to do. Asking God's guidance in prioritizing our time helps us understand which of our callings in a day are the most important and which can be set aside. The more conscientious about fulfilling our tasks we are--which usually translates into the more we think the world depends on what we do--the more we need this help.
The nightmare scenario that follows in the wake of not asking God's guidance in these things: waking up one morning and realizing that you're a good pastor, a fine blogger, a great garbage-taker-outer, but that you're never going to get to hold your little boy in your lap again because he's off to college and you don't even know him that well. Cue up that "Cat's in the Cradle" song now.
As you pray this week, ask God to guide and govern your time as well as your tasks. I know I will. Now I'm off to play race cars...which turns out to be the most important and holy thing I can do right now. Who knew?
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
