Chapter 26 - Time Management

Chapter 26 illustrated “Time Management” in 7 Bible passages, as follows:

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Psalm 90:12
2 Corinthians 5:18-6:2
Job 7:1-10
Psalm 39:4-6
James 4:13-17
Ephesians 5:10-17

Prayer:

The hassle with being a better manager of your time is making the decisions about what is now most important and what is no longer important. But if you ask God what he’d remove if it were his life, he would gladly tell you.

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 26 was “Take Time to Be Holy” by William D. Longstaff. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Benediction:

“O Christ, when I look at you I see that you were never in a hurry, never ran, but always had time for the pressing necessities of the day. Give me that disciplined, poised life with time always for the thing that matters. For I would be a disciplined person. Amen”

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Anthony Bloom, M. Basil Pennington, Evelyn Underhill, Susan Annette Muto, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, James Stewart, and Henri J. Nouwen. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

· “There is absolutely no need to run after time to catch it. It does not run away from us, it runs toward us.”
· “…when you can use five minutes, three minutes or half an hour for leisure and for doing nothing …you sit down and say, ‘I am seated, I am doing nothing. I will do nothing for five minutes,’ and then relax and continually throughout this time (one or two minutes is the most you will be able to endure to begin with) realize, ‘I am here in the presence of God, in my own presence and in the presence of all the furniture that is around me, just still, moving nowhere.’ …you must (then) decide that within (these two or five minutes) which you have assigned to learning that the present exists, you will not be pulled out of it by the telephone, by a knock on the door, or by a sudden upsurge of energy that prompts you to do at once what you have left undone for the past ten years.”
· “There is in the lives of most of us a good bit more freedom and flexibility to organize (a time of apartness), if we really want to.”
· “Spiritual achievement costs much, though never as much as it is worth.”
· “Once we begin wisely allotting time for reading and reflection, wondering and writing, we shall soon notice the reward. Life becomes less pressured. Christ, not the clock on the wall, becomes the center of our lives. Amazingly, we seem to accomplish more…”
· “Since meditation on the Scriptures, prayer, and intercession are a service we owe and because the grace of God is found in this service, we should train ourselves to set apart a regular (time) for it… This is not ‘legalism’; it is orderliness and fidelity…”
· “But look at Jesus. Busy and crowded as our days are, his were emphatically more so. …and yet the harder the days were, the more time did Jesus make for prayer.”
· “The only solution is a prayer schedule that you will never break without consulting your spiritual director. Set a time that is reasonable, and once it is set, stick to it at all costs. …Let everyone know that this is the only time you will not change and pray at that time.”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 26 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John