A life untended, aimless days

The chaos that surrounds us demands that we impose order! Ordering your world requires that you pay attention to the details, that you mind the little things. For example, ever note a lawn that is mowed regularly, but the corners aren't trimmed, the edges along the flower beds are untouched? The details left undone make the whole job look bad. Keeping the big picture in sight is also important, but it is very unlikely that we will accomplish the BIG dreams of our lives if we live in constant chaos produced by our inattention to day to day management.

Let me illustrate my point practically--

• Does the 'big picture' of your life include a life-time marriage full of love? A spouse feels loved and cherished when you care enough to pick up your socks, clean up the kitchen, and call when you're delayed in traffic. Yes, little things, but the stuff of life. Know this: a wonderfully intimate marriage cannot be sustained on a yearly vacation and a weekend get-a-way now and then. Love is sustained by the morning kiss, the evening hug, the little things that say, "You are important to me, in this moment."
  
  
• Want to balance your checkbook and enjoy financial freedom? One author warns about the 'coffee stop' factor that ruins many a household budget. His point? You can make a cup of coffee to take for your commute to work that will cost you a few cents, or you can stop every morning at Dunkin' Donuts and spend $2. Seems like a little thing until you compute the yearly cost to discover that those cups of coffee add $500 a year to your budget! $2 here, 50 cents there... and before long you have major uncounted expenses. My Dad had a funny phrase about details -- he would say, "Mind the pennies and the mice!" It's a farmer's saying. A profitable farmer notes the little expenses and eliminates the small creatures that eat away the margin.
  
  
• What to stop living on a treadmill of frantic activity that keeps you from doing what you dream about? Buy a schedule book and learn to use it! Paradoxically, the more ordered your daily life, the more time - long term- you will discover is available to do what you really need to do. A person can save hours of time IF she will take one hour to create a plan at the beginning of the week that eliminates duplication and wasted time. Ever see a person who shows up at every meeting trailing papers, breathless from trying to make copies at the last moment, and still shuffling through folders trying to get ready? Imagine the reduction in stress IF that same individual took a hour's focused time the day before to put all the stuff together needed for the meeting.
  

Great Christians tend the little things. Major sins and failures do not happen in a moment. Lives disintegrate, one little lapse at a time. Billy Graham, whose integrity is legendary, made a simple covenant at the outset of his ministry, that spared him from having to deal with a temptation that has ruined a lot of great men. He promised his wife and ministry partners - "I won't be alone with a woman other than my wife, not riding in a car, not in a hotel room, not ever." He made the decision before a problem ever existed!

Make a priority decision to do the 'little things' that are needed- not to prove anything to God, not to comfort yourself with attention to meaningless detail, but to open your heart and mind to the flow of the Spirit.

• Put going to church high on your weekly schedule.
• Pick up your Bible every day.
• Give from the top of your paycheck, not the left-overs.
• Pray before you watch TV.
• Do ministry before you play.

OK, I can hear your objections. "Jerry, that sounds like a lot of duty, like religious exercise." Could be, if you choose to glorify the act instead of seeing those things (and others certainly) as means of discovering God's presence and purpose in your life. John Ortberg writes, "Spiritual disciplines are to Christian life, what warm-ups are to a basketball game! A player’s vigorous performance in warm-ups indicates nothing about his skills to play, but if he fails to do warm-ups, the level of his play will certainly be affected."

Here's a word from the Word - let it go deep in your mind today. "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air." (1 Corinthians 9:24-26, NIV)