Challenge #1 - Time

(Winnond - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Think of  the average greeting you share with a person you pass in the office or perhaps on the street.  It usually goes something like this: "Hey, how are you?"  "Good - you?"  "Doing well, thanks."  And on you go.  But if you take a moment to stop and interact, I find one of the most common words to pop up in the conversation is busy.

"How's life?" 
"Oh, really busy." 
"Yeah, I hear ya'." 

We often feel busy because we don't know how to handle our time, and I believe this might be the greatest challenge to the Christian faith today.  Consider the consequences:

- How many followers of Christ struggle with having any sort of devotional life (reading, prayer, reflection, etc.) because they feel like they can't make the time?
- How many church attendees arrive late and feel the need to rush out after the service is over because of other obligations?
- How many youth are so involved in sports and other extra-curricular activities that they can't make it to a weekly youth group meeting, a retreat or camp, or even to church because they have games and practices all throughout the week?
- How many parents are working well over 40 hours a week in order to pay the bills and give their families a  "nice life"?

On the other side of our harried lives, consider Jesus in Mark 1.  After a day of healing and performing many signs and wonders, Jesus finds (or makes) time to go off early in the morning in solitude and commune with His Father in Heaven.  In the future posts, we will look at a biblical model of how to handle time but for today, let us merely consider how busy we are and if our lack of time management has been impacting our spiritual lives.

- tC