Time, Sleep, Agendas, and Power

It's hard to believe I've gone over two weeks without posting, isn't it?

I have a background working with networks and computers, and Anderson Bat Company (my husband's company) finds itself in between full-time computer people . . . so I am filling in. We'll see how long it lasts! It is going well so far, but it is not my goal for myself -- nor is it my husband's goal for me. I am guessing it will last exactly as long as the house-remodel project lasts, and then when I have fulfilled that obligation and have my husband's blessing to become a full-time student . . . well, we'll see.

So, my usually full schedule is now truly full, and I am enjoying it. Life works well for me with the work-day routine and all housework and homework relegated to the evening. I don't tend to procrastinate as much if there is an assigned time to do something and no other open time to think I'll do it instead!

But this is also a time of spiritual adjustments. Intimacy with God takes time. I can't hear God if I don't take time to listen . . . and even if I do make the time to listen, I can't hear Him if I'm over-tired or so focused on my own plans and agendas that I can't set them aside long enough to really hear His.

We are so much a world that is playing a game and watching all the various "points" each of us scores, and we are so much a world where we find ourselves drawn into competitions for "points" and winning and power . . . even when we've chosen to center our lives on something completely different like pursuing the One Who understands real significance and power.

My little boys (and the big ones too, actually!) play various video games, and sometimes I sit and watch. There is one game where you can do things to increase one of the "scores", and yet my boys were ignoring those obvious ways of accummulating a measure of life and success. Josh, watching with me, explained to me that that measure really didn't mean anything in the long run. and that they were right to ignore opportunities to increase that "power". It didn't affect their real power or longevity or success in the game. Hmmm . . .

If I were playing, I wonder how long it would have taken me to figure that out, and how long I would have gone after accummulating the obvious source of power only to find later that it wasn't the real point of the game and that it didn't help me in any measurable way? I suspect that the satisfaction of seeing an increase in that kind of point, coupled with the ease in each scene of adding to that kind of point . . . would have been addicting enough that I would have made it the point of my play and not really cared that it wasn't the "best way" to play the game. But I don't play videa games.

I do find myself playing the game of life very much like most of us play it, though. And the more driven by a work-day routine and normal good-worker, good-mom, good-wife, and good-person agendas that I find myself, the less able I find myself to pursue the things that really matter. All those other kinds of "points" are the obvious ones to pursue . . . and the "gratifying" ones, too, when you are as competitive as I can be!

But I do have enough of a taste of REAL LIFE to get me out of bed at 5 each morning now. I do hunger for that time of really encountering God Himself. And I do know that the only "points" that matter are the reality of knowing Him the ways He wants me to know Him and of becoming the woman that He desires to make me and of doing those things that are His idea of what I should be doing in any given moment.

I just need to add to that motivation the motivation to go to bed early enough to be rested enough at 5 to be able to greet my Lord with something other than a fatigued body and mind and soul. And that would require getting my diswasher loaded earlier and the boys to bed earlier, which requires the whole evening to start a bit earlier . . .

But the only "points" that matter are the ways that I can be an effective tool in God's hand to accomplish His purposes. And I can't be that without however much time and attention He needs me to give Him alone with Him each day. So all of my routines and scheduling and priorities need to revolve around that reality.

I need Him. The rest flows from that reality.

And, at this point of my life, I do really know that. It's not just words. It is enough to shape all my other routines and commitments and relationships.

Have you had enough of a taste of His beauty and His love and His passion that you can say the same? If not, find the time to really authentically "taste and see"!