Today’s
Scripture Reading (July 23, 2012): Leviticus 25
One of the essential ideas of life that we seem to have lost is the idea
of margin. The belief behind the idea of margin is that we all need empty space
in every area if our lives if we are to remain healthy. In everything that we
do, we need to find margin. I hope that as you read these words that you have
allowed for some empty space around the edges. The reality is that margin in
what we read helps us to comprehend the meaning of words and sentence structure
– it makes the words on the page easier to read.
Margin in our time helps us to live healthy lives. We need down time
when we can simply unplug from everything, but without margin downtime is essentially
impossible. And as the stress of life goes up, the need for unplugged play time
goes up as well. And if we do not have the capacity to increase our play, the
crash that is waiting for us is just around the corner.
Honoring God with our finances means finding margin in them. It is not
just about the tithe, but margin means that when things get tough financially,
we have saved enough to make it through. The essential concept is that we use
only a portion of the money that we have to live, the rest we either give for
the work of God or we put it away for the future. It is all part of God’s plan
for us. But the truth is that very few of us have been able to build margin
into our lives in the important areas of time management and finances. I have
friends that are working two or three jobs and working every day of the week to
keep up their standard of living. And that is a scary situation because I can
already see the crash coming.
The Sabbath is really all about margin. It is about building days and
even years into our routine where recovery can happen. I love the idea of
Sabbath year. And I believe that not only would the land be healthier if we
could celebrate it, but that our own lives would be healthier as well. But I
also know that the Sabbath year has almost never been celebrated voluntarily.
Whenever it was celebrated, it was because disaster hit – the crash had finally
come. And the reason why it has not been celebrated is because we have
forgotten to be a people of margin.
My hope and my prayer is that we can slowly start to rebuild margin back
into our lives. I do not think we can do it quickly, but for both our spiritual
and our physical health, that margin is more essential than we can ever
imagine.
Tomorrow’s
Scripture Reading: Leviticus 26
No comments:
Post a Comment