A Heart of Wisdom | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: A Heart of Wisdom | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ramona Cook
08/06/16
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It requires skill and an awesome endurance to put off doing things that need to be done. We tend to think of that approach as the easier road; not so.

The need itself carries an invisible weight and presses into our thoughts with repetition requiring us to cast it aside again and again, especially if someone else is depending upon us to do the deed and they then begin to get impatient.

There are indeed a few things that we can put off doing forever and it will make no difference, and that one point is the acid test to alert us to the real importance of the action we are being called on to perform and it will help to prioritize our activities.

We who live on terra firma all find ourselves afflicted by the tendency to delay doing things we do not like to do only to say after having finally done it, "Wonder why I put that off so long?"

If we are assessing ourselves and find that we are coming up short on "getting things done," then self deprecation is not the productive way to deal with the problem.

We need to think through our schedule and take note of several factors: firstly, is there in fact too much being expected of me?

I recall a comic strip that showed Linus going for a walk with his blanket dragging behind him. Upon walking the block and returning home his comment is, " I wonder why just walking the block has made me so tired?"

The reader can see that all the friends of Linus have jumped onto his blanket and gotten a free ride.

The list of hindrances to good time management are as varied as the people who evaluate it, but evaluation is necessary.

Sometime our lack of energy, and even depression, needs medical attention.

Sometime all our time and attention is used by those around us who have problems and we need outside assistance from agencies that provide helpers.

Whatever the hindrances to good time management and productivity each of us can find a workable answer if we are convinced that time is important and reasonable productivity is a Godly expectation.

Ps. 90: 12; "Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom."

In my first training class for pulpit fill-in I was assigned the topic of "Time." I was to prepare a 10 minute talk on that topic.

Of course I set into praying for something to say because it sounded like such a dry subject. Yes, ideas began to flow and these are some of the notations I made:

There are 24 hours in one day, 1440 minutes, and divided into 3 sections each one equals 480 minutes or eight hours each section.

We are supposed to sleep 8 hours. 480 minutes used.

We generally work eight hours, another 480 minutes gone.

That leaves only one section of our day, 480 minutes to do all the other things we do such as shop, commute, prepare the meal, eat, do the dishes and washing, bathe, dress, spend time with the people in our lives, read, pray, attend Church Services, mow the yard, get the car serviced, and on and on. Please note; the average American watches television three hours per day equaling 180 minutes.

I found it depressing; but it did, and does provide to me a sense of urgency to use time wisely and to prioritize my family relationships and my time with God as first.

Then there is the Great Commission of which we are all as Christians, commanded. "GO" into all the world and spread the Gospel.

In assessing our productivity we then find it necessary to be certain that we are engaged in some way with fulfilling that command.

John Peterson wrote songs and hymns and books from his bed. Others give to those who can go and reap the same reward as the one who went; that is a God principle.

The important thing is that we do not permit the things of low importance to use our limited time, for all too soon - time comes to an end.

I read somewhere about a study done on the words of dying persons, most of them were not so much repentant of the things they had done as of the things they had left undone.

"Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom."

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