A Time For Everything

             There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: (Ecclesiastes 1:3)

In the devotional Jesus Always by Sarah Young, yesterday’s discussion was about the possibility that God might reveal to us what we are to do without revealing to us when we are to do it. The problem is that we may automatically think that the revelation means we are to do today what we should do tomorrow or a year from now. In other words, we suffer from HUNY: Hurry up! Not Yet! Syndrome. A writer friend invited us to share with her how we deal with procrastination. The problem with procrastination is that we put off what we should do today until tomorrow or a year from now. In other words, we suffer from Later syndrome.

You might think that a person who does one would not do the other, but in my rush to do now what has become my current task, tasks that I should take care of now get shoved aside. In my busyness and in my poor sense of priorities, important things are often shoved aside for the “urgent” – the thing that happens to be on my mind. I have a system for marking the priority level of activities in my organizer. I don’t bother because, of course, I know what’s important and what’s not. Then, the important things like time for prayer or Bible study get shoved aside because I “must” do something else that probably could wait an hour or two, and the Internet is calling. Rarely does it ever occur to me to ask God to order my day or direct me to what I should be doing now, and even when I do, ten seconds or ten minutes later, I’m on a detour. And somehow, I doubt I’m alone. So this must become my task, to ask God either not to reveal a what until we’re at the when – which will not teach me patience, or to regularly ask if we’re there yet – or perhaps if we’re then yet.