It may not be very apparent to you by the sound of chirping crickets here on my little corner of cyberspace, but there’s been plenty of thinking and writing going on the past several weeks. I just stopped posting what I was writing. I would get through about 90 percent of my thoughts and have to leave a piece unfinished. Something would always interrupt. My husband would walk through the door after work, my son would wake from his nap.
In some ways, it was refreshing to untangle some very frustrating knots in my heart without broadcasting them. Even more refreshing to not have to work hard to give the impression of resolution. No one watching. No one to be bothered.
I’m also reading this tiny book (anything less than 200 pages is tiny, for me) on leadership, and the author presented a few straight-to-the-point methods of time management for overly busy people who feel like they are burning the candle at both ends and praying for more wax. The takeaway for me is that I just need to decide what matters. What stays in my life, what goes.
The question I found myself asking after that segment of the book: why am I writing?
If you’ve ever heard the big-rocks-and-little-rocks analogy, you know you can’t put the little rocks in the jar until all the big rocks are accounted for. But let’s be honest. The more agonizing decision is not which rocks to leave out of the jar, but comes before you even get to that point: which ones are the big rocks and which are the little rocks?
Every time you put in a big rock, a lot of little rocks have to be left out of the picture.
Some big rocks are obvious. Jesus, husband, son, church. But then you get to things like hobbies, individual relationships, ministry opportunities, and you have to examine each rock more than you’d ever be comfortable admitting out loud.
That’s where I’ve been. Lining up my rocks and, even more eye-opening, evaluating the jar. I haven’t done anything of the sort ever, and have paid for it with a host of sinful responses to stressors, not the least of which are anxiety, control issues and neglecting my own relationship with Jesus.
I used to think the jar was my time. I tried to see the whole of everything my life could hold as hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a year. Jesus has been giving me new eyes to see that the energy, the very pieces of me I pour into each activity and relationship amalgamate over time into a bigger reason for existing. Am I living that way? That’s what I’ve been yearning to find out.
Suddenly, the rock is not occupying a volume of time but a volume of purpose. And the rocks I’m throwing out aren’t the ones that don’t fit into my schedule, but the ones that I said yes to because I had time but no direction, no meaning, no understanding of eternity.
As I’ve been writing this, I’m reimagining that whole Mary and Martha scene into an image I pray will never leave me. Mary, at Jesus’ feet, smiling and enjoying Jesus’ presence. Martha hobbles in with a jar filled to the brim – no wasted time – but burdened. So burdened.
Jesus looks at my Martha heart, grieving over me. “Come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
The rest is in the purpose. The striving, the laboring, the going to keep going to get somewhere and not knowing where or to what end, only ends in half-victories and unsettled hearts.
This too is a grievous evil:
As everyone comes, so they depart,
and what do they gain,
since they toil for the wind?
All their days they eat in darkness,
with great frustration, affliction and anger.
I can’t be the only one who crawls into bed each night having worked hard and been so empty and dissatisfied in my heart.
When the calendar of my life is stripped away, all that remains is eternity.
And there are a lot of foolish things I could do, not the least of which is attempting to fill up a jar of eternity.
cluttered closet theology 