One Handful Life podcast notes

We’ve been taught that if one is good, two is better.  Would you agree?  If one is good, two is better.  If one dollar is good, two is better.  If one nice car is good, two is better.  If one house is good, another vacation house is better.  If one wife is good, two is better.  Okay, it breaks down a little with that last one.  I always argue with Solomon.  You know he had hundreds of wives.  One time a guy asked his seminary professor “Why did Solomon had so many wives?”  The seminary professor answered, “So when he came home he could hopefully find one in a good mood.”

Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind. Ecclesiastes 4:6

Here are the statistics I got from Rick Warren.  Not sure where he got them.  Of course, you know my opinion.  86.5% of statistics are made up

  • People now sleep 2 1/2 fewer hours each night compared to people from one hundred years ago.
  • – The average work week is longer now than it was in the 1960s.
  • – The average office worker has 36 hours of work piled up on his or her desk. It takes three hours a week just to sort through it and find what we need.
  • – We spend eight months of our lives opening junk mail, two years of our lives playing phone tag with people who are too busy to answer, and five years waiting for people who are trying to do too much and are late for meetings.

A one handful life leaves some margin.

Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, Richard Swenson, M.D. describes margin like this:

Margin is the space between our load and our limits. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating.

Margin is the opposite of overload. If we are overloaded we have no margin. We don’t want to be under-achievers (heaven forbid!), so we fill our schedules uncritically. Options are as attractive as they are numerous, and we overbook.

If we were equipped with a flashing light to indicate “100 percent full,” we could better gauge our capacities. But we don’t have such an indicator light, and we don’t know when we have overextended until we feel the pain. As a result, many people commit to a 120 percent life and wonder why the burden feels so heavy. It is rare to see a life prescheduled to only 80 percent, leaving a margin for responding to the unexpected that God sends our way.

Be on your guard. against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Luke 12

A couple of weeks ago a woman walked into church and two days before church she had gotten into a car accident.  She hadn’t been in a while and just showed up so we could take care of her.  And we did.  We loved on her.  We gathered around her and prayed for her. We offered her help.  I know some of you are getting ahead of me and thinking, “Okay, I know where he’s going with this.  If I get in a car accident and I’m not involved in church, where will I go for help.  Well, if that happens I’ll just show up next week and people will help.”  And we will help.  We’ll love you no matter how long you’ve been gone.  That’s true. But still you missed the point.  When that woman showed up to church in need, where were you?  Where were you to help them?

1) Let go of what doesn’t matter

Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1

Better is one handful with tranquility, one handful with financial margin, than two handfuls with a financial noose around your neck.

 

2) Fight for what does matter

What are you fighting for?  What worthless junk do you need to drop so that you can fight for what’s important.

 

Here we are at the Potato Shack in Encinitas waiting for our man hole sized pancakes.  Get the chocolate chip!

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