Time Matters

What are the things that matter?


* Time in God's presence

* Time with family

* Time with spouse

* Time with friends

* Time for quiet and just myself

* Taking care of myself physically and spiritually, which takes time.

All this on top of the required time we spend at work or school.

Basically how we use our time is what matters.

I've heard it said, "Look at someone's checkbook and you'll see their priorities." It's true, how we spend our money shows a lot about what we care about. How we spend our time is just as telling.

This Spring, as new life is just beginning, take a few moments to do a time inventory of your schedule. Does your calendar reflect what you believe to be your priorities? Some days we don't have much choice, but over a week or month's time, we should see a good reflection of what's important to us.

Time for my own inventory.

Black Friday Shame

I'm so embarrassed about the behavior of my fellow Americans. Each year it gets worse. Each year the shopping season, also known as Christmas, creeps closer and closer to Thanksgiving. This year it invaded Thanksgiving as many stores opened on Thursday evening.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is a day for family, it is a day to remember all our blessings and take time to give thanks to God. It's a day to feast, visit and rest. It is also a day when businesses are mostly closed, people don't have to work, buy or think about the cares of day-to-day life for one day.

I mean how desperate are we to buy one more thing? To beat someone else to the sale? To sacrifice our dignity, our compassion, and possibly our safety on the altar of materialism?

How I wish every single person in the United States would've boycotted the stores on Thursday. Can you imagine? All the stores that planned for sales on Thursday, forced their employees to leave family and friends to sell stuff and try to control the crowd, imagine if they were empty. Employees standing around staring at each other, their steps echoing through the empty isles. Ah, the image makes me smile. Maybe after that they never would've opened on Thanksgiving again.

But we Americans love to buy. It's now our national duty to buy and keep on buying. We must feed this insatiable monster inside us that continues to grow. And we won't stop until people are killed in the mass chaos of it all.

Then we'll have legislation that will help us control the beast within. The federal government will have to limit how stores offer sales because the people can't be trusted to control themselves.

Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit.

Lord, we need more of your Spirit.

I wanted to put a video with this blog, but I can't bring myself to do it. If you want to see the horrors carried out by your fellow man this weekend, check it out on YouTube. There are plenty of videos from all over the country.

If you'd like to see our family's attempt to avoid Black Friday, check out my husband's blog, "What I Love About Black Friday"