Time to Breathe (It's Thanksgiving)

Well, the holiday season of thanks is coming up in less than 24 hours, so I absolutely have to write a blog post about it.  While you are being surrounded by craziness in life such as the great (horrible) Thanksgiving Song: "It's Thanksgiving"impeding school work, house preparations for the great family meal, I'm going to invite you to do something unnatural.  Take the time to breathe.  Instead of being consumed by the busyness of life, how about you spend this break from work, break from school, to breathe.  To have time with your family and loved ones.  To watch some football. To yell at the TV...to breathe.

Many of us have been living with a theory that seems like it is the right thing, but in reality it may not be.  I'm talking about workaholism   Doing too much work, not giving yourself margins to live your life.  Not being about to literally live your life to the fullest because you don't have any time to live out! Having margins in your life are not only necessary, but also, refreshing.

You know when you wrote a paper in school, and when you would type it on Microsoft Word (or something else), you had margins.  You had margins to restrict how much you are writing, but if you wanted to say, be cheap and get more bang for your buch, you could make the margins smaller...and smaller....and smaller...just to fit everything in.  But here's the problem, teachers had standardized margins, so when you tweaked with the default, you would lose points right?  Well if you look at life as a standard word processing document, and God as your teacher, you might view things a little different huh?

This is an interesting dynamic.  In our American lifestyle  the more you do, the better.  I mean logically, the harder workers (generally) will get paid the best.  (Generally) will live the more abundant  (Generally) will be the happi.... Oh wait.  I need to stop there because the hardest workers aren't (generally) the happiest are they?

An old wise saying noted to us that, "if the Devil can't make us really bad, then he'll try to make us really busy."  Why?  Because being busy with seemingly important things, stops us from paying attention to the most Important thing.  I'm too tired to work-out...I'm too tired to read...I'm to tired to do this-to do that....I don't have enough time to read my bible.  Sound familiar? (yes, Michael, it does)  God, err, Teachers, give us the perfect amount of space to get everything we need to get done.  When we fill our lives, errr..papers with fluff, we feel like we don't have enough space.  What we need to do is sift through our papers and dwell on the important things, God, our family...and then you can just keep going down the line.

I know..I know you need some scripture.  Well, if you turn yo Bibles to the story of Mary & Martha in Luke 10:38-42.  I'm not going to go into it too much because I want you to do some reading on your own.  But notice what Jesus said in verse 42.  If something great is 100 yds away, you shouldn't be occupied by the "good" thats 10 yds away.  Keep on pressing toward the mark my friends! (Phillippians 3:14)

So this Thanksgiving, be happy.  Sure there is going to be some prep time.  But the key is, don't let it drive you crazy.  Don't let it hinder your time with your loved ones.  This season is a time to have a heart of gratitude.

I'm going to end it with a great quote from Craig Groeschel:

"When something small loudly demands all our attention, 

its noise often drowns out the whisper of what's enormously important"

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

--MJA