Only 25 days

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!!!