We all know what it is like to feel trapped in the urgent. You know, all the stuff that if somehow don’t get done right now the world will come crashing down.
I woke up the other morning about 3 with a list of four or five things that all of a sudden “absolutely had to get done today for sure”, if not yesterday. (It is interesting that these things were comfortably on a list of “things that ought to be done tomorrow” the night before.) But at three am when I really should have been sleeping, the blasted things kept screaming dire predictions of chaos and ruin.
Whatever happened to that bit in Psalm 127 that I memorized way back when that says in the ESV Bible that, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.”? Sure, even at 3:05 am, it’s easy to tell myself that “it’ll all be ok and stop this silly worrying about stuff that I’ve got a plan for and can’t do anything about right now anyway.” Agreeing with myself is a totally different thing.
Once it got to be 5 and I got up and dressed and had my boots on and coffee cooking, I remembered something my dad used to say when I was a kid and started thinking about having more than just a few coins to rub together. I was thinking about dollars. You know, real honest to goodness folding money that meant something. He’d say that if I’d just take care of the pennies, the dollars would take care of themselves. That was good advice that I have followed, or tried to follow. Mostly. Or enough to know that when I actually prioritize and give my best attention to the seemingly small things, the big things generally work out the way I want them to.
Focusing on the important vs responding to the urgent.
Put another way, focusing on the important is how to deal with the urgent. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being trapped in the urgent. As a matter of fact, I’d just as soon avoid it all together. That isn’t to say that we don’t need to take care of business, because we do. Just because I didn’t pay the HVAC contractor when I should have before the bill was due doesn’t mean that I don’t need to figure out how to get it done today, when it is.
Apart from exploring or creating opportunities for my team, I have been in the process of switching a bunch of my focus from students to faculty. I’ve learned that faculty ministry is a whole different ball game. Especially as compared to community college students. For many of those students, we may only have a semester or a year, so we have to be quick. But I may have many years with faculty. So the question becomes…
What will make the most difference 6 months from now?
Or a year from now?
Or 5 years?
That got me thinking about finances, where it seems like the battle is won or lost one Dr. Pepper, one Snickers, or one trip to Whataburger at a time.
What difference does a few bucks make, you might ask. And there’s the danger. Because a few bucks probably doesn’t really make any difference. And since it doesn’t make any difference, it’s too easy to lose track of. And before you know it, 15 trips to Whataburger, and a few dozen other doesn’t matters later, the spending plan looks like a nice trail ride turned rodeo. Not good.
So I got to wondering what it would look like to never spend less than $100. (That’s the number that really gets my attention… maybe your number is different)
Does that mean a Dr. Pepper or a trip to Whataburger is always out of the question? No. But it does mean that unplanned spending happens way way less. I mean the kind of spending that really doesn’t matter. It means that you spend $100 (or more) on a card or a wad of cash that you can use how you want for Whataburger or Snickers. If your $100 runs out, you decide if you can spend another $100. The point is that urgent stays out of the cash flow business.
Spending is about important things and things that matter.
Whether spending money, or time…
What’s going to make the biggest difference 5 years down the road?
*Photo by Janice Carriger from Pexels