Take Time
Take Time by Rev. L. John Gable
July 31, 2016
Many of you are aware that this past year I was invited to join the faculty of a program sponsored by the Board of Pensions of the Presbyterian Church called CREDO. Credo is designed for the health and well-being of mid-career pastors. The goal is to help pastors thrive, not just survive, in ministry and we do so by inviting them to participate in an 8-day conference in a remote setting, far from where they live and serve, hence away from any demands and distractions, and there surround them with a faculty of professionals who address issues of their well-being: emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially and vocationally. My role on the team is to serve as the Conference Leader by coordinating the faculty and creating an environment of welcome and encouragement for the participants. At this stage of my life and ministry I believe this is a way I can “give back” to the next generation of pastors and churches, and I am grateful to you for allowing me the opportunity to do so.
On the first night of the conference, in my very first presentation, I talk about being conscious of the way we use our time. While God may be eternal, beyond the confines of space and time, we are not. For God “one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like one day”, but not so for us. The time allotted to us is limited and finite which makes it a precious and valuable commodity, so we must be intentional in our good use of it. In order to get at the importance of that I use an exercise created by the business leadership guru Steven Covey called the Time Management Matrix and it is printed in your bulletin this morning in the section on Sermon Notes.
I know you have all seen the children’s sermon illustration using the rocks in a bucket. The question is asked, how much can you put in the bucket? If you start with the big rocks you realize there is a lot of empty space, so then you start adding smaller pebbles then sand to fill the open spaces, and finally water to fill the bucket completely. The take away from that little exercise is intended to be: put the big rocks in first, that is do the important tasks first, then fill the rest of the bucket with the less important things. Of course that is good advice, but I also think that exercise sends another, perhaps more subtle and unintended, message: you can always cram a little more in. So many of us live our lives trying to cram a little more in to our hurried and harried schedules, which leaves us precious little time to stop and reflect on what is really important and what really needs to be done, or left undone.
In our passage from Ecclesiastes 3 we read, “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” Some of you may recall that one of my 30 Gleanings from 30 Years in ministry is “there is always time to do what needs to be done as long as you do what needs to be done when it’s time to do it.” I believe and practice that, but still it begs the question, “How do I know I’m doing the right thing at the right time?” This is where the Covey diagram may be helpful.
He lays out four quadrants of how we spend our time. The first quadrant I want to talk about is in the lower right hand corner, number IV: NOT URGENT and NOT IMPORTANT. Covey calls this “trivia”; we may call it “down time”. Sometimes we use that time to decompress at the end of the day, to pass the time while waiting for an appointment, or for our own relaxation and enjoyment, and there is nothing wrong with any of that. But, how much time do you think you spend each day or each week on “trivia”: fiddling with your phone, scanning through Facebook or some other social media, watching endless hours of television when there are other tasks which call for your attention? Those NOT URGENT and NOT IMPORTANT activities can be “time killers” in that they consume far more time and attention than we ever imagine without any real benefit or value.
The second quadrant is in the lower left hand corner: URGENT but NOT IMPORTANT. Covey calls this “distraction”; we may be more familiar with phrase Charles Hummel came up with years ago in his little book, “The Tyranny of the Urgent” in which he says, “The important tasks rarely must be done today, or even this week. The urgent task calls for instant action. The momentary appeal of these tasks seems irresistible and important, and they devour our energy. But in the light of time’s perspective, their deceptive prominence fades; with a sense of loss we recall the vital task we pushed aside. We realize we’ve become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent.” Urgent, but not important tasks call for immediate attention, instant action, RIGHT NOW. We often think of these as being “interruptions” and they too can consume us. The neighbor comes over to share the latest bit of gossip and stays for hours; the customer complains that the order hasn’t come in on time, so we jump into action; the homework assignment you’ve been putting off for weeks comes due and has to be done NOW. You get the point.
So often in life we get caught up in “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” syndrome that we lose sight of the fact that the loudest and most pressing issues are often not the most important ones. I still remember the first time I saw the sign that said, “Lack of advance planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” That is a stance in protest to the “tyranny of the urgent, but not important.” I think the exiled Soviet author Aleksander Solzhenitzyn was on to something when he wrote that “hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of our century” and Ghandi when he said, “There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”
The urgent is not always the important, but sometimes it is, which brings us to the third quadrant, number I in the upper left hand corner, the URGENT and IMPORTANT. This one is the easiest to discern. We can call these “crises”. Attention is needed and it is needed NOW, so we drop everything and go into action: her water breaks, the fire alarm goes off, the call comes that you are needed NOW. These urgent and important issues are typically unplanned and often ill-timed, but when they come up the calendar goes out the window without question or debate. Crises must be dealt with, but discernment is still called for because not everything is a crisis.
Which leaves us with the fourth and final quadrant: IMPORTANT but NOT URGENT. This is the area of our lives that asks a different kind of question than any of the other three. The others demand our time claiming their importance, out of fatigue or interruption or crisis, but this one does not. This one too often is overlooked and forgotten simply because it sits quietly in the corner, making no noise or demands on our time or attention, so we put it off, thinking we will get to it later, at a better or more convenient time; too often however we do not, to our own detriment, because these issues while important are not urgent.
Given their undemanding nature we must be intentional and deliberate about carving out adequate time for the issues in this quadrant because they focus on life’s meaning and purpose and priority, on relationships and destinies. As Thoreau put it so aptly, “It is not enough to be busy; the question is, what are we busy about?” Are we giving sufficient time and attention to the important issues and questions and relationships in our lives, or are we simply being distracted by the urgent and consumed by the unimportant? We may nod our heads in agreement that “for everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven”, but given that we don’t know how much time we have been given it only makes sense that we focus on the important not the urgent, on “doing the right thing at the right time” and not just giving a knee jerk reaction to every shiny object or opportunity that comes our way.
Have you ever noticed in the Gospel stories that Jesus is always busy, going here and there, being with people, meeting their needs, but He never seems to be in a hurry, never anxious, never distracted? Why is that? It is only because He knew the importance of what He was doing; He was about His Father’s business, even in those times when He seemed to be interrupted. Recall the story of the woman who was healed by touching the hem of His robe as He walked through the crowd on His way to heal the son of a leader in the synagogue who was dying. Clearly she was an interruption in an otherwise busy day on His way to a critical situation, but Jesus didn’t treat her as such. He stopped and took time to visit with her, despite the insistence of His disciples that He keep moving. Even as tensions began to rise as He made His way to Jerusalem where He knew He would face suffering and death He took time to slow down, to have meals with friends, to heal the sick and to teach His utterly confused disciples. Look at Jesus’ entire life and ministry, despite the demands on His time and attention He always took time to worship in the synagogue “as was His custom”, to spend time with His Heavenly Father in prayer, to take time for Himself. Why did He do these things? Not because they were urgent, but because they were important.
There have been numerous studies of people in their later years asking this question: If you could live your life over again what would you do differently? It is an open ended question and the respondents were allowed to answer in unstructured ways. The three answers that consistently emerge over and over again are: 1) I would reflect more. 2) I would risk more. 3) I would do more things that would live on after I am gone. Issues of importance, not urgency. Psychologist William James echoes this when he writes, “The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” That is what we are doing with this precious commodity we call time, we are spending it, but the question is, on what? May we spend it on something that outlasts us and has eternal value.
This is what Peter was getting at in our second Scripture lesson this morning. In this passage he is addressing the concern that some seemed to be having that the Lord was slow about His coming again. Has He forgotten His promise to return? No, says Peter, God doesn’t work in the same time/space continuum that we do; it is that eternal/finite thing that one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. Time doesn’t matter, it is not important, to God like it is to us, He is not limited in the same ways we are, so God is not being slow about His promise, despite our sense of urgency; He is being patient not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance. In short, Peter is saying, the Lord is focused on the important, not the urgent, and we must do the same.
Rather than focusing any of our attention or energy on when the Lord will return, which He promises He one day will, let us rather focus on what we should be doing in the meantime. In a book of prayers by Michael Quiost he writes, “All people complain that they haven’t enough time. It is only because they look at their lives from too human a point of view. There is always time to do what God wants us to do, but we must put ourselves completely into each moment that He offers us.”
One day the Lord will return to redeem and restore and recreate a new heaven and a new earth, so Peter asks the “important but not urgent” question we must ask ourselves, “what sort of person ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for the day of the Lord?” How should we live our lives as followers of Jesus? How should we ensure that we are focusing on the important and not succumbing to the tyranny of the urgent or the trivial?
Peter instructs us in this way. “Beloved, while you are waiting for these things strive to be found by Him in peace, without spot or blemish, regard the patience of our Lord as salvation… and grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” How do we do these things? By focusing on what we know to be important and eternal; by following hard after Jesus, walking in His way, loving God and others; and by making time, intentionally doing the things that He did, to sustain Himself in the faith and in His relationship with His Heavenly Father. Friends, if Jesus saw the importance of regular worship, we must as well. If He saw the need for regular times of prayer we should as well. If He saw the need to get away from the crowds, alone and away from the demands of ministry and service, we should as well. If He saw the need to build deep relationships with friends, reach out to outcasts and serve the least and lost and lonely, then we should as well. Jesus knew the importance of “keeping first things first”, of paying attention to the “important, but not urgent”. As individuals and as a church we must do the same, so we commit ourselves to the important priorities of growing in our faith, of going deep in our relationships, and of building a stronger community.
Each of us has been given a precious and valuable gift of time….one life…a single day made up of 24 hours…1,440 minutes… 86,400 seconds… and each of us must decide for ourselves what we will do with that gift and how we will use and invest that precious commodity.
For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. By God’s good grace and guidance, let us commit ourselves to doing the right thing at the right time. Amen.