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which box will you be spending your time in between now and christmas

There aren’t many days left before Christmas but, if you are like me, you’ve lots to accomplish.  The way you choose to spend your time is going to impact your Christmas.
 
 
The countdown to Christmas has begun.  As I write this blog, I fully recognize that I have about twenty days of activities to cram into ten.  Time is not on my side at the moment.
 
I am not complaining.  I am expressing concern—a concern that I believe many share.  Of course, the time crunch I face does not include the tyranny of interruptions.  Cathy and I just gave a hefty Christmas bonus to the repair shop that fixed the brakes on our van.  That is five hours of time and a wallet full of money we won’t see, again.
 
Several years ago, Stephen Covey constructed the time management matrix similar to the diagram above.
 
Covey claims that too much time is wasted in quadrants three and four:  those activities that are urgent yet not important, as well as those that are not urgent and not important.  Moreover, the quadrant that receives the least amount of attention is number two:  the not urgent yet important.
 
Issac Watts most famous carol sets forth this challenge to the church:
Joy to the world the Lord is come,
Let earth receive her King,
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven and nature sing.
 
The inspiration for Watts to write this refrain came from Psalm 98.  In short, Watts echoes the Psalmist’s exhortation to the world to set aside the tyranny of the bottom two quadrants and make time for the important yet not so urgent work of preparing one’s heart for the coming of Christ, once again, this Christmas.
 
I often hear Christians wish to make each Christmas different from the past.  My sense is that they wish to spend a greater amount of their time doing the kinds of things that reflect their faith in Jesus.  However, as goes the old saying, we are all given the same amount of time each day.  What we do with the 1440 minutes given to us every day can make all the difference in the world.  The difference becomes wherein each box we spend those minutes.
 
-Pastor David