I’ve been thinking about all the time I spend managing life. A nine year old marriage, three daughters, closing out graduate school, a new position at CBS, new ministry efforts, and all the other wonderfully challenging aspects of life amount to a huge task list waiting to be administered, to be managed.

I can easily spend several hours a day pouring over various pockets of need. How is this thing going? Am I missing anything? What’s going well? What do I need to look out for in the future? What needs to start now so that when the future is the present we’ll be prepared? Those kinds of questions, while rooted in wisdom, can be tyrannical.

What ever happened to living life?

By “living life” I’m not talking about the American myth of care-free living. What I mean is this: whatever happened to being spiritually engaged in life’s challenges instead of trying to merely make it “manageable”?

Faithfulness to God and people has been replaced by faithfulness to future goals.

I think there are many difficulties that we just try to avoid, to get through. But when I look at Jesus in the gospels and the example of the Apostles in the book of Acts what I see is struggle after struggle, difficult situation upon difficult situation…and in the midst of those challenges the Lord works to bring redemption and healing through his gospel.

How much God-given ministry have we missed because we’re so busy managing the situation?

In Jesus we have redemption from judgment, freedom from darkness, Spirit empowerment to do the Father’s will, victory over sin, and good works prepared for us. How petty I am to miss these things in the name of effeciency and smooth-sailing.

Some will say, “Well, you can’t just run around that way and not take care of details.” Which I think is true and false. True, we must handle the details. I am a husband and father. I am commanded by Yahweh to love my wife and teach my children the truth of God in all things, all the time. That requires some administrative effort. But it’s false to think we can’t live through our situations. It’s a matter of spiritual perspective.

You can be both diligent in the details and diligent in spirit. Actually, I think that’s closer to who we’re called to be.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 1:04 pm and is filed under theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.