What I want to do & What I am doing

An idealized day for me would be spent reading something I can't put down in a room with lots of natural light and cool air. I would grab a chair, a seat on the couch, or sit on the steps of the back porch and read all day. I currently am reading 3 books that I would love to devote that much time and energy to. Reading for me is a passion. An idealized day would be spent reading but how many days do I give over to something I like doing so much? Very few.

The truth is that if you are like me our passions end up on the back burner for the busyness of work, life, and responsibility. We put so much of ourselves into the things that seem to be the most pressing, the most lucrative, the most productive that on some level we loose the ability to prioritize justly. Let me unpack this...

Paying bills has to be a priority. Going to work has to be a priority. Spending time with your children, your spouse, partner, friends, whatever has to be a priority. Exercising your passions for art, literature, cooking, music, etc has to be a priority. All these things have to be a priority but how do we rank them? Is work more important than spending time with your children? Is reading more important than getting a jump on filing your taxes? The answer I think is a matter of understanding what it means to prioritize justly. We must work to see ourselves as a whole and not a compartmentalized body. Wholeness means that the work that we do and the books that we read are both formative in the construction of ourselves & that while work pays better than reading (in most cases) we cannot be whole unless we seek a just balance between passions and promotion. Scripture ( and the Byrds...click here) teaches us that "to everything there is a season" which means for me that I must think in terms of the totality of life rather than those things that seem to be either most pressing, lucrative or the like. I must ensure that the passions of being alive are not oppressed by what it takes to afford to do them.

So today I am going to thank God for the things that I have been given. For my love of reading, travel, and the like but also the gifts that I have been given for the Call that I have. My prayer is that I can find the harmony, the just priorities between what I want to do and what I am doing. This is my prayer for you as well.

See you Sunday.