How to Get the Most Out of Life
Jul 30th, 2008 by ljkim
One of the first books I read during seminary was Margins by Richard Swenson and I hated it. I hated it because its thesis was that to get more out of life, one often needs to do less. Much less. You see I was VERY busy in those days, and I liked it that way. Work hard, play hard – and…serve God… hard.
I haven’t picked up the book since I first read it (over ten years ago,) but its main point has stayed with me. To use an analogy…if you want to get 100% from your car, you probably should NOT use 100% of its capabilities 100% the time. A driver that slams on the gas then slams on the brakes using all of the car’s traction and power at all times would be considered a bad driver… Prone to accidents, and prone to mechanical breakdowns. But when it comes to time and money, that’s exactly what people do when they try to “maximize” them.
Swenson’s suggestion is to build “margins,” buffer space, into everything you do. If you have $10 of time to spend, spend just $5 that way you have a some left over. What are you going to do with the extra $5 of time? Dunno. Maybe nothing. Maybe something good. But the idea is to not use EVERYTHING so that you have time and energy and money left over for important things that pop up.
But shouldn’t we make the most of what God gives us? That’s like saying we should use all the sugar in the sugar jar for our morning coffee, or eat all the food the fridge – likewise there’s nothing pious about being greedy with our time and money. But margins are actually God-honoring. If we are in charge of our own lives, then we must maximize our work and play. But if God is in charge of our lives, then we must build-in margins so that we’ll be ready and available for His last minute plans.
Since I started putting that into practice I’ve found: I think it’s in the in-between times that God can get a hold of me best; it’s when I learn the most. I met my wife in an in-between time, and we’ve had the most fun in those unplanned in-between times; that’s when I picked up hobbies, met new people, and learned new skills that I wasn’t planning on learning. There’s also in-between money, extra money left over at the end of the year to give away or put to good use. All this leads me to wonder, “Why was I so resistant to the idea in the first place?”
[About the photo: Stolen from the new cover picture of the book by Swenson.]
Related posts:
“it’s in the in-between times that God can get a hold of me best”
Can you help me understand this?
I thought that doing what God wants such as working on one of the many flaws in our lives would allow him to get hold of us best.
also a kinda offtopic one.
How can we do what God wants of us if we are sinful and broken? Even if we are righteous through Jesus Christ, the sins we commit still hurt our lives. There seems to be a cycle of realizing we are sinful, then trying to work on it, messing up and repeating. Is there any way out of it?
sorry for the long post
Hey A – sorry for not replying sooner!
Question 1 – ever have a lock on a door that gets stuck? What happens when you push or pull on the door while trying to turn the key – it makes it harder to turn. But if you let go of the door, take the pressure off the lock, and then turn it, it has a better chance of turning…
In the same way when you’re actively being proud (for instance), you won’t be able to deal with a lesson from God on pride… Why? Because it takes humility to realize you’re proud. Or if you’re really obsessed with money – you won’t be in a great place to really learn anything majorly-new about how you relate to money… It’s when money is not an issue (and not when they’re repossessing your car) that you’d be able to make radical changes in attitude toward how you spend money.
Question two – this is the beauty of the Cross. God brings good things out of evil things… If we had to wait to be perfectly good before God could use us for good, we’d be waiting a long time. Let’s talk more about this sometime!! — Leo