Marg gave a speech today in front of her peers. When she read this to me last night for practice, I was brought to tears...
Only 25 days
until Christmas. A time when we celebrate the Birth of Christ – but we also get
caught up in the business of the holiday season.
We are busy
shopping in hectic crowds, waiting in long lines at busy airports, trying to
bake just a few more dozen cookies… life seems to get busier and busier – a bit
out of control to say the least.
There is
just never enough time!!!
From: The
Applause of Heaven by Max Lucado
HIS
SUMMIT
If you have
time to read this chapter, you probably don’t need to.
If you are
reading slowly in order to have something to occupy your time… if your reading
hour is leisurely sandwiched between a long stroll and a good nap…if your list
of things to do today was done an hour after you got up… then you might want to
skip over to the next chapter. You probably have mastered the message of the
next few pages.
If, however,
you are reading in your car with one eye on the stoplight… or in the airport
with one ear listening for your flight… or in the baby’s room with one hand
rocking the crib… or in bed late at night, knowing you have to get up early in
the morning… than read on, friend. This chapter is for you!
You are in a
hurry. America is in a hurry. Time has sky-rocketed in value. The value of any
commodity depends on its scarcity. And time that once was abundant now is going
to the highest bidder.
A man in
Florida bills his ophthalmologist ninety dollars for keeping him waiting one
hour.
A woman in
California hires someone to do her shopping for her – out of a catalog.
Twenty bucks
will pay someone to pick up your cleaning.
Fifteen
hundred bucks will buy a fax machine… for your car.
Greeting
cards can be purchased to express to your children things you want to say, but
don’t have time to: “Have a great day at school” or “I wish I were there to
tuck you in.”
America –
the country of shortcuts and fast lanes. (We’re the only nation on earth with a
mountain called “Rushmore”.)
“Time”,
according to pollster Louis Harris, “may have become the most precious
commodity in the land.”
Do we really
have less time? Or is it just our imagination?
In 1965 a
testimony before a Senate subcommittee claimed the future looked bright for “free
time” in America. By 1985, predicted the report, Americans would be working
twenty-two hours a week and would be able to retire at age thirty-eight.
The reason?
The computer age would usher in a gleaming array of advances that would do our
work for us while stabilizing our economy.
Take the
household, they cited. Microwaves, quick fix foods, and food processors will
pave the way into the carefree future. And the office? Well, you know that old
stencil machine? It’ll be replaced by a copier. And the files? Computers are
the files of the future. And that electric typewriter? Don’t get too attached
to it; a computer will do its work, too.
And now,
years later, we have everything the report promised. The computers are byting,
the VCRs are recording, the fax machines are faxing. Yet the clocks are still
ticking, and people are still running. The truth is, the average amount of
leisure time has shrunk 17% since 1973. The average work week has increased
from forty-one to forty-seven hours. (And for many of you, forty-seven hours
would be a calm week.)
Why didn’t
the forecast come true? What did the committee overlook? They misjudged the
appetite of the consumer. As the individualism of the 60’s led to the
materialism of the 80’s, the free time gained for us by technology didn’t make
us relax; it made us run.
Gadgets provided more time…more time meant more
potential money…more potential money meant more time needed… and round and
round it went. Lives grew louder as demands became greater. And as demands
became greater, lives grew emptier.
“I’ve got so
many irons in the fire, I can’t keep any of them hot,” complained one young
mother.
Can you
relate?
When I was
ten years old, my mother enrolled me in piano lessons. Now, many
youngsters excel at the keyboard. Not me. Spending 30 minutes every afternoon
tethered to a piano bench was a torture just one level away from swallowing
broken glass. The metronome inspected each second with glacial slowness before
it was allowed to pass.
Some of the
music, though, I learned to enjoy. I hammered the staccatos. I belabored the
crescendos.
The
thundering finishes I kettle-drummed. But there was one instruction in the
music I could never obey to my teacher’s satisfaction. The REST. The zigzagged
command to do nothing. Nothing! What sense does that make? Why sit at the piano
and pause when you can pound?
“Because,”
my teacher patiently explained, “music is always sweeter after a rest.”
It didn’t
make sense to me at age 10. But now, a few decades later, the words ring with
wisdom – divine wisdom. In fact, the words of my teacher remind me of the
convictions of another Teacher.
“When He saw
the crowds, He went up on a mountainside…”
Don’t read
the sentence so fast you miss the surprise. Matthew didn’t write what you would
expect him to. The verse doesn’t read, “When He saw the crowds, He went into
their midst.” Or, “When He saw the crowds, He healed their hurts.” Or “When He
saw the crowds, He seated them and began to teach them”. On other occasions He
did that … but not this time.
Before He
went to the masses, He went to the mountain. Before the disciples encountered
the crowds, they encountered the Christ. And before they faced the people, they
were reminded of the sacred.
Before you
“face the masses” try to spend some time with Jesus on the mountainside.
Have a very
Merry Christmas!!!
