itsawonderfilledlife

Emily Dickinson said, “forever is composed of nows.”

As an experienced procrastinator, such words sit heavily on my conscience.

I wanted to set a new goal for this new school year (which always seem more like the start of the year than January, for me). It came to mind, quickly, that I needed to have a goal of daily accomplishments … little bites of things to be done, rather than waiting for the next weekend, the next holiday.

So that is what I have been attempting to do.

One day it was cleaning the bathroom, another it was dusting the furniture (you know, one of those jobs you do when you can write on the furniture, with your finger, and it stays there like a not-so-secret message), another it was cleaning my bed table (you would have to see it to understand what a job that was), another was waxing chairs I had painted (two chairs each day).

These were all little jobs that, having been left to a weekend, would have seemed to have stolen the concept of day off or sabbath.

The words of Emily Dickinson take us beyond my simple goal of getting things done, now.

Her timeless words remind us of the words in Ephesians 5:16, “redeem the time, because the days are evil.”

There is so much in our days that take us away from the things that actually redeem or best use our time. Things like prayer, worshipping our God and Creator, spending time in God’s word.

But there are also ways to intermingle our one-to-one relationship with God with our days full of work, and chores, and maintaining life. When we take care of God’s creation, when we love our neighbour (or family, or co-worker), when we do our jobs to the best of our abilities, when we clean our toilets with thanksgiving we are walking on holy ground, experiencing and expressing worship to our God. We are redeeming the time … making the best use of our time.

We still need to pray and read God’s word, for that is for our own, personal growth and development with Christ, but we also need to take what we learn and spread it around in our daily lives.

And now is the time!