Ice
I grimace a little.
The sound makes me.
Is it the rubbing? Kind of like metal on metal.
But not really.
More like the squeak-shriek of a clown twisting a skinny yellow balloon into a poodle.
Only different.
Maybe fingernails on a chalkboard.
Except not quite.
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Write Them
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)
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Whatever it takes.
Loving Monday: Just Another Piece of Pie
The crumpled chart probably still sits somewhere amongst my old school papers, sandwiched between an analysis of theories of nuclear deterrence and a report on Mesoamerican prehistory.
It’s how I was taught to order my life.
A five-piece pie, promising to bring balance and structure and make me a super saint.
Social.
Physical.
Intellectual.
Recreational.
Spiritual.
That’s all there was to life, and if I could just keep the pieces the right size, I’d coast along nicely.
It worked.
I got up at dawn, ran the dorm steps to the weight room, cleaned up, headed to the student center to meet friends for morning prayer, hit the cafeteria for breakfast, and ran to class. One hour physical, one hour spiritual, half hour social, two hours intellectual . . . And so would go most of my days. I even had the color coded daily schedule to prove out my balance at the end of the day.
I liked the order, the slots, the compartments.
And who doesn’t like pie?
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The Rabbi’s School of Time Management
If you’ve read Steven Covey, or even sat under the instruction of one who has, you’ll be familiar with the urgent/important matrix. More than just a time management principle, it’s a solid basis for prioritizing most anything in life.
The principle breaks our activity into four quadrants that looks something like my crude sketch.
Managing life or work this way depends on being able to distinguish between important and not, and urgent and not. Often related to crises, the Important and Urgent things are important (must be done) but are also urgent (must be done now).
Not Important and Urgent tasks look more like interruptions or distractions. These things don’t need to be done but they capture our attention because if they’re going to be done at all they need to be done now.
Not Important and Not Urgent activities don’t contribute to meeting our goals, but somehow lure us away into dorking around with them, keeping us from those things that matter.
It is understood by those who ascribe to this philosophy that high performing people and groups devote the greatest share of time and resources Important and Not Urgent activites — the prize behind Door Number Two. Important and Not Urgent are tasks that may not have time-sensitivity but are so crucial to accomplishing what we desire and becoming who we long to be.
High-value activities like planning, training and preparation.
High-value activities like exercising and eating right.
High-value activities like prayer and study and being with Jesus.
But in real life, when so much demands immediate attention, we throw out what packs the biggest punch in favor of what screams the loudest.
And so we spend more of our time on things that matter less.
I’m not teaching a class on time management, though I truly wish I’d have thought of Lazarus the last time I did. Because long before there was a Steven Covey, Jesus was already practicing one of the most foundational principles of time management ever known to man.
Jesus knew the impact of Important and Not Urgent.
Jesus got it.
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Loving Monday: I’ll Ask the Questions Here
“This is not a teaching moment. Don’t you dare use it as one.”
I forced a grin back into its straight place before I looked up. I knew who stood in front of my desk. She announced her arrival in my office 100 yards before she got there with quick stomps, rustling papers and the seesaw sounds of her indecision between gasps and sighs.
I always knew. Of all the folks I had the privilege to manage, she was my favorite.
As she threw herself backwards into the chair, the file ejected from her hands onto my desk. I grabbed the papers as they slid by.
“What are you working on?” I asked, peeking out from behind my manila shield.
“I’m buried,” she said.
Gasp.
“I just need to know if there’s coverage. Yes or no? That’s all, just the answer.”
Sigh.
“Don’t help me find it. Don’t ask any questions. Just tell me.”
A half-swallowed laugh stuck in my throat and interrupted her next gasp. I straightened in my chair and stared her down.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked.
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Lodge Hall of the Pharisees
Guest post by Paul Willingham
Last summer while on a pilgrimage to our daughter’s home in the northern suburbs, Bette and I pulled up behind a Prius, Toyota’s hybrid entry in the development and marketing of greener vehicles. (If it was last weekend, it probably would have been parked on the shoulder, now that Toyota’s recall problems are in the news.)
It wasn’t the hybrid that caught our eye, however. It was the vanity plate on the vehicle.
We often get a smile from some of the plates that we spy while others challenge us to try to figure out what the owner is trying to tell the world. I’m convinced that many times, the significance of the abbreviated, obtuse and hidden message is only obvious and important to the owner of the vanity plate. But the plate we saw was very plain and left no doubt as to the message.
It read I TITHE.
We spotted this plate in a heavily traveled, traffic-delaying intersection known locally as the Devil’s Triangle. I don’t believe that there is any spiritual significance in that but you never know (cue the Twilight Zone theme).
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Coming Up for Air
When God exhaled through the pen of the writer of Judges, just what joint and marrow did He think to divide?
My eyes burn from watching Him brandish the blade with wild flourishes in the final chapters, and I consider that yes, it’s living and active. And of course it’s useful for teaching and training in righteousness.
But really.
Must it have been so grisly?
And to what end?
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Loving Monday: The Optional Downgrade
When I shopped for a new business computer a few weeks ago, aside of the basics of RAM, hard drive and processor speed I had one other primary requirement. Without it, no matter the alluring price and mouth-watering features, I would reject it.
It must have an optional downgrade.
My business applications aren’t grown up enough to run on Windows 7 yet. I require old reliable, Windows XP.
As I worked with retailers over the phone in search of my downgraded machine, I could hear their eyes roll into their head when I said, “Okay, one more thing.”
The consistent response: “Sure, whatever you need. Just don’t ask me for XP.”
I asked anyway.
Eventually I found one. My shiny new Dell (still available with the downgrade, if anyone is looking) is on its way.
I will confess the “move backward to move forward” process left my straight line, orderly mind just over on the mushy side.
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And Now, Laish
My land lacks nothing whatever.
I consider this, here in my basement office. Light is sparse, but the desk lamp casts glow enough to see the pages before me. A small heater warms slippered feet while fingers relax at the keyboard’s warmth. With a mound of whip and foam melting into espresso I dig into soft oatmeal and wonder how long I can linger in this place of no lack.
The quiet covers me here. No rushing, no chasing what I cannot control.
I let my mind off its leash a while and see myself emerge from the cave weeks later with wild hair, clothes hanging and skin, pale to start, now absent even a hint of color.
And smiling.
A crazy, wide-mouth grin with sunken eyes sparkling.
I always imagine delight at abiding here in this, my land of prosperity, of safety and security, of no lack.
This deep place of isolation chosen, this is my Laish.
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Resistance
It seems a constant in my life that the best things God has for me are those same thing I at first resist the hardest.
Take my husband. He can probably tell you the number of years, to the day, that I resisted before I succumbed to his charm.
And what a good thing God had in store.
I’ve done it with churches, jobs, ministries, friendship, even writing.
My first answer is No.
And then He pushes me forward from behind.
Sometimes a gentle nudge. Others a full-force shove.
One day, with my heels dug in deep, He threw me headlong into it with a friend that now I can’t imagine life without.
And today is her birthday.
(I sure hope this doesn’t backfire.)
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The Conversation