Enough Time

Enough Time by Brian Andreas

This is a time of transition in my life and I've been using it to evaluate how I use my time. I often feel overwhelmed - too busy, too much to do, not enough time to do what I want. I think I'm just one of many in our country who feel that way. At least in the US there seems to be an understood correlation between amount of work done and sense of self-worth. We brag about how hard we work, how few hours we sleep, and how we never have time to do what we enjoy. And unfortunately, I find myself falling in to this.

I don't want to live like this. Life involves hard work, but it also involves joy and rest. I think many Americans have totally lost the concept of a Sabbath, a day (or even a few hours) of rest. There are times when I think of activities that I usually enjoy doing as things that I have to do or should do, and that takes the joy out of it. Our self-talk is incredibly important, and I don't want my life to look like a giant To Do list.

I want to enjoy my job and grad school even though they are areas of "work" in my life. I also want to intentionally spend more time doing things I enjoy, and I want to give back to the world around me. When looking into all of the activities and volunteer opportunities that I am interested in, I was overwhelmed. There are so many worthy causes to which I could give my time and energy! This made me think of  Rob Bell's sermon Jesus is Difficult, Part III. I've listened to this sermon so many times that I can almost recite it word-for-word. It covers a lot more than I am going to touch on, and all of it has great meaning to me.

Rob Bell talks about Jesus healing people in a village, and after a day, Jesus is ready to leave:

You have a village going, "Stay with us! Stay with us! Stay with us!" Begging him. Real needs... You have real, pressing good things he could be doing. In fact, I would argue, great things he could be doing... And at some point, to all of these good, pressing, urgent, real needs of real people, at some point he walks away.

He reads several scriptures saying that Jesus was going to Jerusalem because that is what God has called him to do, and then continues:

He's oriented everything around Jerusalem. So everything that he does, every interaction, every aside, everything is gaged or run through this filter of "does this prevent me or help me get to Jerusalem?" So what he says yes to and what he says no to are dictated by this larger goal and mission of he's got to get to Jerusalem... Now this doesn't prevent him from being compassionate, generous, and spontaneous.

To live in a way in which I am that attuned to God's will! That is what I want. There are so many good things that I can do, but as Rob Bell encourages the congregation to write down: I don't have to do it all. That is hard for me to wrap my mind around sometimes, arrogant as that is. I don't have to do it all, which is good because I can't do it all. But, I can do something, and I am thankful that there is exactly enough time for the important things in my life.