Lists

July 18, 2020

Sometimes you just can’t get it all done. Today’s list was apparently longer than the day itself. The crew was here overnight, so this morning Linda and I were engaged with fixing breakfast and talking with the grandkids one at a time as they woke up. These Saturday mornings stretch from around 7:00 am till at least 11:00, with a little extra time thrown in to finish tidying things up. Neither of us had had time to read our Bibles, so that was next on tap, followed by occasional walks down to the swimming hole to meet whoever is camping out on our lawn. Today, there were about two dozen people rotating in and out. 

Linda was busy most of the afternoon getting things together for our July birthday celebrations at the lake, while I fixed a fan and made coleslaw. A graduation party, practicing my bass, then taking it to church tonight so I could load tables in the truck for tomorrow, writing tonight’s meditation, and I just don’t have the energy at 8:45 for the day’s workout, which is OK, because I am still sore from yesterday’s.

To-do lists are one way we manage to accomplish things. If I have a day with nothing planned, nothing gets done. When evening comes, I look back and wonder, “What have I accomplished today?” I don’t like feeling that I’ve frittered away the day. Life is a precious gift, and wasting it is a sacrilege. My problem is, many of the things I want or need to get done take me longer than I like, so I end up with stuff hanging off the tail end of my to-do list. 

It’s taken me a long time, but I’m learning to accept “carry-overs” from today to tomorrow. When we start feeling guilty about the things we didn’t get done, we are dangerously close to what St. Paul called “works righteousness.” The salvation of the world is not my responsibility; it’s God’s. I have a role to play in it, but the outcome doesn’t rest upon whether or not I get everything on today’s list done. 

Jesus said it well. “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith?” —Luke 12:27-28 NKJV

No, I didn’t get everything done. Someone younger or more talented than I could probably have crossed off everything on my list, but tomorrow is another day, another gift from God for which to give thanks and bow before the Lord Jesus Christ who alone in this world finished everything on his list for our salvation.