My mother-in-law fell this week and broke a bone near her knee. Thankfully, surgery wasn’t required but she’ll need time to recover in the coming weeks.
A single phone call can rearrange your week. We fill our calendars with plans as if our days belong to us, only to be reminded how easily God rewrites them.
I need to preach this message to myself every day.
James 4:13–14 (AMPC) comes to mind: “Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a city and spend a year there and carry on our business and make money. Yet you do not know [the least thing] about what may happen tomorrow.”
And if James reminds us not to presume upon tomorrow, Paul reminds us not to be anxious about it in Philippians 4:6–7. Instead, we’re to bring our concerns to God with thanksgiving, trusting Him with the plans we hold so tightly.
This has been a challenge for me since I work in the publishing industry, which works on hard deadlines. So, I have to plan.
If I’m editing a book for a publisher or personal client, I agree to a deadline and then work backward (400 pages over 15 work days = 27 pages per day). One seeming interruption that wipes out half a day or more means I need to make up the difference another day.
If I’m writing a book for a publisher, the same principle applies.
As a caregiver, my day is often choppy as I perform one non-work-related task or another. While that is incredibly challenging, it has also given me opportunities to share the gospel, pray with people and build deeper bonds with those in my care.
That’s more important than hitting a deadline.
It doesn’t, however, stop the inevitable status check emails and calls from publishers or clients.
So, is there a balance here somewhere? Well, I don’t really believe in balance. Some seasons require one thing, and other seasons require another. Rarely do we walk through life balancing everything perfectly. Nor do I think we are supposed to.
The question I need to ask myself is, am I open to what God puts on my calendar today, no matter what it is?
Some days I am, and other days, not so much.
Monday morning, I’ll open my calendar as I sit down with my first cup of coffee. The appointments will still be there. The deadlines will not have disappeared overnight. I’ll still need to work from a plan because that’s part of faithful stewardship.
But before I begin checking boxes, I hope I’ll remember the words of James and Paul from the verses above. My calendar tells me my intentions (and my publishers’ expectations), but not what God has in mind.
Sometimes the most important thing we’ll do all day never makes it onto our calendar.
