Y Thursday, March 06, 2008Y
8:11 pm
"Sky Of Love" was a wonderful movie to watch. Thank God I stepped out of my comfort zone and watched it alone at the Cathay. It was a touching movie, about unselfish love and also family being impt! The main characters acted really well. Even my tears began to flow down my cheeks towards the end!Tmr I going to Thailand, Quite sad actually, it feels a bit like being confined for three wks. Thinking about not attending church services and being so far apart from my friends and family really saddens me. But thank God for the wonderful friends He placed around me. If nt, I think the trip will be really really boring. Thinking of the xiong work ahead of me, I hope that my character will be built up after this trip. I tink I will become more independent after experiencing my first overseas trip without my family members.
9:16 am
Not many people say on their death bed that they wish they had spent more time at the office. Yet, many of us are working longer and longer hours while time spent with God and time spent with our families and friends is squeezed out. And time doing nothing – just idling in neutral doing not very much at all but enjoying the ride – well this disappears altogether. We do not think it is time spent wisely, but time thrown away.Stopping is precisely what we must do. We must stop and appraise and evaluate how we use our time. For time itself is not the problem: it is what we choose to do with it. It was once put to me this way: your problem isn’t time management but Stephen management. Time is the given, Stephen is the variable. To do this we need to set
priorities.
Sorting priorities
So here’s a story to help. A time management consultant was once giving a lecture to a group of students. He placed a glass bowl on the table and filled it with large stones. ‘Is the bowl full?’ he asked them? ‘Yes’ they replied. He then pulled out a bag of pebbles from under the table and fitted them in around the large stones. ‘Is the bowl full?’ he asked again. ‘Yes’ they replied. He then pulled out a bag of sand and poured it into the bowl. ‘Is the bowl full now?’ he asked them. ‘Probably’ they cried, getting wise to his tricks. ‘No’, he shouted and poured a jug of water into the bowl. ‘What lesson can you learn from this demonstration?’ he asked them. The students started to discuss what they had seen. ‘Its amazing how much you can fit in if you really try’, was their suggested conclusion. ‘No’, said the time management consultant’ ‘the lesson is this: get your big stones in first or you won’t get them in at all’.
Hiding behind activity
So the lesson is simple: what are your big stones? For yourself, surely they are time for God; time for your family; time for the things that make you the person God has made you to be; time for rest and creativity. And in the church, surely they are time for worship and prayer; time for community and discipleship; time for evangelism and mission. But this is really hard to achieve. And what is one of the best ways of avoiding the painful discernment that is required? Well, being busy of course. But often busy with the wrong things, and often regretting the important things that are left undone. We are so busy climbing the ladder that we fail to see that it is leaning against the wrong wall. It is only by daring to stop, by discerning priorities, that we will get our big stones in place.