prioritize

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Prioritize Or You Will End Up Picking Up The Pieces

We sometimes underestimate the time little tasks take and, therefore, fail to prioritize them.

prioritize or you will end up picking up the pieces

Maybe it’s just me but, when I’m not working on a significant project, I’m easily pulled away from the secondary work I have to get done. 

This week I didn’t have to write a sermon, which is normally a major weekly project. For that, I am pretty protective of my time and I manage it through the week. 

I don’t know what it is but, when I don’t have a major anchor like a sermon to structure my week around, I’m not as protective of my time. 

It’s like a high school kid on summer vacation. He wakes up every morning and his parents give him a bunch of things they want him to do before they get home from work. Any plans or ideas of what he wanted to do now come under the new assignments he’s been tasked with.

This past week’s disaster is mostly my fault; I just needed to guard my time better. 

Someone called and needed help with something. I was only working on little tasks so I left what I was working on to help them get their task done. 

That happened two or three times this week, and because I felt like I had some extra time, I also worked on a couple of other things I had not planned on. 

We’ve all seen jugglers who have about five balls in the air and then get someone to throw another ball into the air for them. Often they incorporate that extra ball into their routine seamlessly. 

But there are times when the ball that gets thrown in arrives too high or low or too hard. When that happens, the juggler doesn’t just miss or drop that extra ball. All the balls he has circling in the air also get dropped. 

The balls scatter.

That’s how I felt at the end of my week. I still had a bunch of little details and tasks to do that were all scattered around me.

When I was in high school, we liked to see how many pennies we could catch. 

… Remember those things? 5 pennies were equal to a nickel, and 100 of them made a dollar – I mean a loonie.

We would bring one arm up and rest the back of our hand on our shoulder so we could stack a pile of pennies on our forearm just before our elbow. 

Then we would snap our arm forward and catch the pile of pennies in our hand. We got up to catching 20, 30, even 40 or more pennies in as many as 4 piles on our forearm.

You had to snap your arm forward really fast to catch all those stacks of coins. But if you missed, you had pennies flying everywhere. (Don’t try this at home, kids.)

Today, I’m picking up pennies – I mean, tasks – that I just didn’t give the priority to that they required. 

Here’s the thing: When you don’t prioritize God in your life, there will be other things and other people that fill your day and keep you from having much or any time with God. When that happens, your life will tend to be a little scattered. You will lose the directional focus you need.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What are you failing to prioritize these days? Leave your comments and questions below.

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Our New Living Room Furniture Looks Odd

The other day we got a new living room couch and chair. My wife has been wanting these for some time. She has taken me to the store, showed me the design she likes, and the colour that fits the image in her head of what she wants our living room to look like.

Grass-Sofa

Since the time she first wanted to replace the furniture in our front room, there have been many other things that have taken precedence. So, even though it’s been in the works for a long time, it just hasn’t materialized.

We have had to replace vehicles, put a new roof on our house, bought a trailer … you know, all good things that, for one reason or other, we needed ahead of new living room furniture.

Our present couch is as old as our marriage – that would be 28 years this summer. I refuse to lie on it because, for many years, I would come home from work or Sunday service and fall asleep on that couch. When I woke up, I never felt rested. It was like the couch sucked the life out of me.

In the last few years, we have taken a few measures to firm up the coach … because a couch can only hold up so many rear ends before it starts to sag itself!

The other day, the store called and told Lily it had arrived. I was pretty excited to see it and told her that I would go in to make the final payment on it so we could get it home as soon as possible.

As soon as I had cleared up my work for the day, I drove as quickly as possible down to the store. I told the salesperson that I was anxious to see my new living room couch and chair. She looked at me like she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. So I explained.

When Lily called me to tell me the living room furniture was in, she was referring to the new bike I had ordered that, once again, was taking precedence over the real furniture she has been patiently dreaming about for so long.

For the price of my new bike, she could have had her couch and chair. The salesperson chuckled and said, “Well technically, you can sit on it.” That’s true, but it only fits one person at a time. And frankly, Lily doesn’t really care if she ever gets a chance to sit on my bike.

Though outfitting our home with a new couch and chair would have been really nice, I had just broken the frame on my bike and, therefore, needed a new one just to keep up my exercising, let alone my enjoyment.

So when I got home with my new bike, all smiley-like, she looked at it, and grinned because she new I was happy. But behind that grin, I knew she was thinking that that could have been her couch and chair.

Maybe next year we can finally fulfill that dream of hers.

Here’s the thing: What we really want can get re-prioritized by others things and by other people. God wants first place in our hearts, but so often we push Him to the side because something else has taken precedence. The only way God will be first in your heart is if you purposely, and ruthlessly put Him there. Then protect His place from everything and everyone else.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What have you wanted that other things have taken precedence over? Leave your comment below.