Easter has come early this year. It feels rushed, and I’m unprepared. All the things I wanted to do have piled up over the days and weeks. I have spread myself too thin.
I can’t help myself. I can’t say no.
Especially, when it comes to my family, they count on me. My husband, my children, my parents, my siblings, my friends—they all ask for help. I give them what I can. I give them of myself.
Only, there isn’t enough of me to go around. So I look at that big long list of things I put aside thinking I’d have plenty of time later. But really, what is the true value of time? If it were looked upon like currency, then I would be like the poor man rich beyond measure.
Because that’s how I see giving someone my time; it’s valuable and precious. If only we would all have more of it to spare for someone else, right?
We don’t think much of it. But it means a lot to those we spend it on.
Last weekend, parents and boys of our local scout troop gathered to lend a young man their time and energies to help with an Eagle Scout project. An entire day’s work went into building a retaining wall near a local church.
But this project isn’t finished. There is still landscaping on the hillside scheduled in the weeks to come. Without the generous donations of time from all those who showed up to work, this project would not have been possible.
It is decisions like this on how to spend our time that forces us to calculate the cost of those priorities on our list.
Do all those things you need to do really matter as much as spending time with someone else?
At least once I month I make it a point to visit my parents. Its a several hour road trip, but all those hours in the car are spent together as a family. No one ever moans and groans about going to Pap and Gram’s house to visit them on the farm. It’s when we have to go home I am faced with a rebuttal.
Time is a blessing we’ve all been given. Use it wisely, give it generously, and share it now while it is in abundance. For we all know when we run short and priorities are high, what it means to us for someone else to give theirs freely.
