Formats, Two Good Books, and Getting Life in Order

Sorry about yesterday's blog format; it was not what I had in mind. Someone may get around to fixing it, but until they do it'll be a memorial to my limitations. I tried to set it up one way and it came out another, and I had neither time nor energy nor skill to fix it. I do want you to know that it was not an attempt to be artsy with me aiming at being modern poetry-like with lines beginning and ending who knows where. It was simply my ignorance of how to format correctly, mixed with some laziness about learning the process.

Speaking of formats, can I say a word or two about formatting life? If you're at all like me the urgent (stuff that seems really huge in the moment) often squeezes out the important (stuff that is really huge for life). The spiritual disciplines are really important because they feed the soul and fuel our fires of passion for God. But what we find is that they get squeezed by today's urgencies like work or doctors visits or sleep or food prep or the ringing phone that we just can't ignore or the baby crying or the leaking faucet or the latest episode of "Lost".

I've found that having a "two-good-books" approach to life helps. It goes without saying that the Bible is The Good Book. After all it’s God-breathed. That means it has come to us from the very inside of God. It’s His mind, His thoughts, His words—exhaled. Read the Bible and you hear the voice of God. Now that’s worth thinking about and doing something about.

But when will I do something about it? When will I read it, and how do I make sure I have time? That’s where another good book comes in: a calendar-book. In my life, the Bible tells me what to do; my (hopefully Spirit-led) calendar tells me when to do it. It’s not as if I’m ruled by my calendar; fact is, I’m liberated by it. It unshackles me to live life fully and freely. It allows me to find time for all that matters, and to leave time for the quiet, still, leading work of the Spirit.

I don’t want to legislate because some of us may do fine without a Day Timer, but not me. In my life, sans my second good book, I’d need near perfect recall, something akin to omniscience to do the important rather than the urgent. I’d always be forgetting or squeezing out what really counts. My calendar does two things for me: it frees me to fit in all that matters most, and it frees me to say "no" to what doesn’t.

I use my day-timer to plan time for family, church life, quietness, rest, devotional seclusion, friends, study, chores. You name it: there are dates and times where it fits. This way I am able to do what needs to get done and to stiff-arm what doesn’t. “No” gets easier to say when you’ve got a complete, priority-filled calendar.

If you’d like more freedom to invest your time in what matters, and more strength to keep time-wasters at bay, you might want to get a calendar today. In my experience, there are two good books worth having: One to tell you what, the other to tell you when.