Margin or Marginless?

From Mimosa cell leader, taken from purposedrivenlife.com


Margin or Marginless?
2009/01/05



God, listen to me shout, bend an ear to my prayer? You've always given me
breathing room, a place to get away from it all. Psalm 61:1, 3 (MSG)


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A lot of people are on overload and headed for a crash. Consider these
statistics:


· People now sleep 2½ fewer hours each night than people did a 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 us three hours a week just to sort through it and find what
we need.


· We spend 8 months of our lives opening junk mail, 2 years of our lives
playing phone tag with people, and 5 years waiting for people who are late
for meetings.


At least in the U.S., we're a piled-on, stretched-to-the limit society
that is chronically rushed, chronically late, and chronically exhausted.
Many of us feel like Job did when he said, "I have no peace! I have no
quiet! I have no rest! And trouble keeps coming" (Job 3:26 GWT).


Overload comes when we have too much activity in our lives, too much
change, too many choices, too much work, too much debt, too much media
exposure.


We're stressed by information overload; we're stressed by accessibility
overload ? we're connected all the time. Simply put, we're stressed by the
pace of life.


Is there a solution? Yes. The solution is to put some margin into your
life. Margin is breathing room. It's keeping a little reserve that you're
not using up. It's not going from one meeting to the next to the next with
no space in between.


Margin is the space between your load and your limit. But most of us are
far more overloaded than we can handle, and there is no margin for error
in our lives.


Dr. Richard Swenson, MD says this: "The conditions of modern day living
devour margin. If you're homeless we direct you to a shelter. If you're
penniless we offer you food stamps. If you're breathless we connect you to
oxygen. But if you're marginless we give you one more thing to do.
Marginless is being 30 minutes late to the doctor's office because you
were 20 minutes late getting out of the hairdresser because you were 10
minutes late dropping the children off at school because the car ran out
of gas two blocks from a gas station and you forgot your purse. That's
marginless.


"Margin, on the other hand, is having breath at the top of the staircase,
money at the end of the month, and sanity left over at the end of
adolescence. Margin is grandma taking the baby for the afternoon. Margin
is having a friend help carry the burden.


"Marginless is not having time to finish the book you're reading on
stress. Margin is having the time to read it twice. Marginless is our
culture. Margin is counter-culture, having some space in your life and
schedule. Marginless is the disease of our decade and margin is the cure."


Tomorrow we'll look at four benefits of building margin into our lives.















Four Benefits of Putting Margin in Your Life
2009/01/06



"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in
heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my
burden is light." Matthew11:28-30 (NIV)


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Here are 4 immediate benefits you'll receive by building margin into your
life:


1. Peace of mind. When you're not always hurrying and worrying, you have
time to think, time to relax, time to enjoy life. We had a bird come into
the building one evening before service. He started singing, and it was
just like we'd been given an invitation: "Just relax. Everybody except
those sitting directly under the bird, relax."


2. Better health. Unrelenting stress harms our bodies. We all know that,
yet we let it continue day after day after day. Many times we only build
margin in our lives after the heart attack almost happens or does happen,
or the blood pressure skyrockets. Why do we wait until our health plummets
before we make this decision? Why not realize thatwe need to build some
margin intoour lives now? The truth is your body needs downtime in order
to heal. Race cars make pit stops occasionally in order to get repaired.
You can't fix anything going 200 miles an hour. Yet, we try to repair
ourselves while we're still racing through life. Margin builds in time for
better health.


3. Stronger relationships. Lack of margin is one big reason for the
collapse of the American family today. When we don't make relationships a
priority and make time for each other, our relationships suffer.
Relationships take time; and margin provides the time to sit and talk, to
listen and enjoy one another, and to provide the comfort we each need.


4. Usefulness in ministry. When you're overloaded by activity, you can
only think of yourself. You're in survival mode, just trying to make it
through another day. But being available to God for his use makes all the
difference in this world.


When you have no margin in your life and God taps you on the shoulder,
saying, "I'd like you to do this for me," your first response isn't joy.
Your first response is, "Oh, no! Another thing to do! Sorry, God ? I'd
like to do that, but I'm just too busy."


We end up resenting the great opportunities God brings into our lives. But
when you have margin, you're available for God to use.


You don't have to live on overload. You don't have to live in survival
mode. Begin today to build a buffer around your schedule. Then enjoy the
benefits of margin and see what God does next!