3-14-10 Time – Margin

How many of you occasionally or normally feel stressed? Would you raise your hands? How many of you would say that you occasionally or regularly drive over the speed limit because you’re late or because you don’t have enough time? How many of you wish you had more time to spend with the people that you love.” How many would say that?

Lots of hands in the air for each of these questions, because we live in a culture that pushes us to the limits all the time. Our culture is always telling us to buy more, do more, and accomplish more – more, more, more. And I would argue that many of us are living at an unbiblical and unsustainable pace. It’s insane what normal is today in our culture.

All you have to do is look at the kid’s of our culture to understand this insanity. Many kids, on top of school and homework, will be out four or five nights a week doing their activities, not to mention what they do on the weekends and we call that normal.

For many of us, the schedules that we impose on our children, end up imposing on us, and if someone were to ask them “Are you really enjoying life?” Some would say, “No, and I don’t have time to talk about it.”

Most of the people that I know have very little margin for error in their lives, and most people have very little margin for the most important things in life. Last week we talked about financial margin and it was then that we defined margin as the amount available beyond what is necessary. It’s the difference between what you have and what you need.

I print my message out on Monday or Tuesday and throughout the week I write notes in the margins. The very best parts of my sermons are often times written in the margins.

Margins aren’t just on paper. If I have 30 minutes to get somewhere and it takes 20 minutes to get there, then I have 10 minutes of margin. Last week we said that if I have $100 and I have $80 worth of bills, then I have $20 worth of margin. Margin is the difference between what you have and what you need.

So, how does margin play out in every day life? Living with margin in your life would be showing up 10 minutes early to an appointment, so that you’re not stressed all the time. Margin would be having 3 or 4 nights a week where you don’t have anything on your schedule.

I can tell you right now, when I get 3 nights a week or more where I have something that I have to do, I am not enjoying life. There’s no time to slow down. There’s no time to unwind. There’s no time to get close with others in my family.

Margin is having time to think, to reflect, to pause and be thankful. Margin is having time to banter with the waiter or waitress, or to go a little deeper with him or her. Margin creates space to slow down and go deeper with life.

I like to skip stones on the beach. One of the things that I’ve learned after skipping thousands of stones is that you have to throw the stone hard in order to skip it well, and when you do that, the stone skips across the water until it begins to slow down and then it sinks. As long as the stone is going fast it never goes deep, it only skips over the top of the surface, but as soon as the stone slows down it goes deep.

As long as I’m moving fast, my relationships are always shallow. They just skim the surface, but when I slow down, when there’s margin in my life, life goes deeper and gets better.

When we slow down, we have time to meditate, to dream, to have fun, to pray, to give thanks. Many of the best things in life happen in the margins.

Margin with God might mean setting aside more time than you normally give. Margin with God means having significant time to meditate on his vision and his mission and his goodness in your life. Margin with God means that you have more than enough time to spend with him, in fact, it means that you have more time than you need with God.

Having margin with a spouse might mean having a date – spending more time than you normally would.  Having margin with a friend might mean that instead of just talking to them on Facebook, you actually talk with them in person, maybe invite them over for an evening.

Margin is having time to drive within the speed limit, because you’re not late. You can actually look out the window and see the beauty of the countryside that’s passing by. You actually SEE God’s creation and have time and mental capacity to give thanks, instead of being glued to the windshield as you race down the road.

Margin is the amount of time available beyond what is necessary – beyond what is “Normal”. Normal in our culture is crazy and unhealthy. Normal creates anxiety and stress and robs us of joy, peace, and love.

Have you ever noticed that those three go together – that you can’t have one without the other? You can’t have peace without love and you can’t have joy without peace and you can’t have joy without love. When we live without margin it creates anxiety, i.e. lack of peace and when we live without margin we don’t have enough good quality time for those who matter to God and to us. When there isn’t enough love, there is never enough joy. Margin is necessary to experience up there coming down here. Margin is necessary to experience God’s best for your life and those around us.

Margin is what many of us do not have. I am convinced that the best things in life happen in the margins. Luke Chapter 10 is a story that we talked about several month back and it continues to plague me and speak to me about how I live and about how many of us live, so I’d like to go back there again today. Luke Chapter 10 is the story about Mary and Martha, the sister’s of Lazarus

Martha decided she didn’t have enough margin, but Mary created margin, and experienced something that could never be taken away from her. Let’s pick up the story at Luke 10:38

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was, everybody say this together, distracted (from what?) by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.

 “You are distracted by many things” Can you relate? “Things” distract us from what is most important. Relationships should always trump things, but we live in a culture that says “In order to be happy, you must make more, earn more, do more and have more, which is in deep conflict with the message of God, which is . . . to Love more. Love God more and love those around you more, and that should trump everything else.

For those of you who have perfectionistic tendencies like me, this goes against your grain. It will not feel normal or right letting your house get a little messy or a little dirty, or for your lawn to not be a perfect. Your might feel unhealthy for your car to get a little dirtier. You might have to serve dinner in the pan instead of in fancy bowls and the party that you throw might not have every detail covered. Your lawn might have to suffer in order to follow Jesus where he’s calling you. You see, relationships are always more important than your stuff. Relationships always trump stuff and in order to have strong relationship, we have to have margin in our time.

In order to follow Jesus, you might not be able let little Jimmie or little Jenny participate in a travel league or some activity that happens every night of the week. It’s different for everyone. The question is, “Do you have significant margin in your life? Do you have significant margin in your week? Do you have space for relationships to happen? Have you created space so that you can process what’s gone on in your day? Do you have enough margin so that you can plan ahead? Do you have enough margin where you can slow down enough to be thankful throughout your day? Last week we talked about the need to be content with what we have, but that begins with contentment and contentment only happens when we have extra time to be thankful. Contentment only happens where there’s margin with our time.

Jesus said, Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. Does that sound like anybody you know? Martha was distracted by all the things that had to be done. Many things distracted Martha, but it’s interesting because each of these two women had exactly the same amount of time, and exactly the same opportunities.  Martha chose to be distracted from what was most important.

What’s most interesting to me was that she was not distracted by what was bad or evil. In fact, many of us might have been distracted by the same things. She wanted to get her china out and she wanted to make sure the napkins matched the table cloth and she wanted to make sure that the toilet paper matched the shower curtain, because Jesus was rumored to be the Son of God and you wanted things to be perfect for the one who was perfect, right?

Now, I noticed something in this story that I’ve never noticed before. Mary is doing what’s right and Martha she’s wigging out, but whose the one who gets angry. It’s not Mary. This is how Satan so deceives us into thinking that we’re doing what’ right. Martha’s is not doing what Jesus would like her to be doing, but Martha’s the one who gets judgmental.

Martha basically says to Jesus, “I’m doing what’s right and she’s doing what’s wrong, so tell her to help me.” Martha’s the one doing wrong, but she’s the one who gets judgmental. Not only is her relationship with God going the wrong way, but very quickly her relationship with her sister is going the wrong way to.

When I don’t have margin in my life, I get in a hurry and I lose perspective and I begin to react in ways that don’t honor God. When I don’t have any margin in my life, I quickly forget to love those around me as I love myself and when that happens, I don’t have as much joy or as much peace as when I slow down and put some margin in my life.

If Satan, our spiritual enemy, cannot make us really, really bad, then he’ll try to make us really, really busy. Because so many of us become so busy at doing lesser things, that we miss out on the most important things. We get distracted from the very best things that God has for us in life.

My life is very full. I go to bed exhausted every night. I like to think that I live life to the fullest. On top of all the stuff that goes on with New Community and all the activities that my kids or my wife are doing, I like to garden in the summer and woodwork in the winter. And it always seems like I’ve just gotten going on a wood project or harvesting the garden when one of my kids will interrupt me and ask if I want to play a game with them or fix something for them or quiz them on their homework or something like that. For the longest time, I used to say, “when I get done, I’ll come and play that game with you or help you with your homework or whatever, but I found that by the time I finished up, either I forgot that they wanted to spend time with me, or they were long past what they wanted me to do with them and they were on to something else. What I found was that if I missed an opportunity to be with them, those opportunities didn’t ever come back around again. So now, most of the time, I just put my stuff down and I go play with them or help them, and then I go back to what I was doing. I have learned to create margin. Letting things slide so that margin can be created, because the best things in life happen in the margins.

So often we think that the people around us, or our kids, are a distraction, but in them is found the meaning of life.

Shannon and I and some friends were having lunch at a restaurant here in town one afternoon when a man named Doug came in a stood at our table. Now Doug is a little slower than most and he’s smellier than most, and he’s a little bit different from most, but Doug is a good guy. We were all talking and Doug came up and just stood there, until I acknowledged him. Doug has this huge smile and he just looked at me and smiled the biggest smile a person can smile. He didn’t say anything, just smiled.

Now, my first inclination was that Doug was a distraction. I was already talking to some good people and I didn’t need another conversation right then. It would have been really easy to try and ignore Doug and hope that he would go away, but somewhere deep inside of me, I think it was the voice of God, because my gut doesn’t say things like this. That voice said, “This isn’t about what you need right now, Adam, it’s about what Doug needs right now. He can either be a distraction or he can be a person who needs to be loved and who needs to talk with people who care about him.

So I listened to that still small voice and I asked Doug how he was doing and we spent the next several minutes conversing. At that moment, the people at our table created margin, we created space for that which was most important. It wasn’t time that we had allotted previously. Instead, we sacrificed some other things to do the most important thing.

So many of us are obsessed with accomplishing our will that we forget about the will of our Father, which is so much better. So often we live by the tyranny of the urgent and we miss the most important things in life.

I think this is funny. Verse 40 we see Martha coming to Jesus saying

Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.

What’s funny to me is that Martha was absolutely convinced that what she was doing was correct. Jesus, I’m over here working my tail off and here’s my lazy sister sitting there on her lazy rump not doing a thing. Jesus take my side. Therein lies the greatest challenge that I have for teaching this message because most of you are going to be convinced that the way you are living is the right way. Many of you are completely convinced that everything that you are doing is completely necessary and good and that you can’t stop anything that you’re doing without your life falling apart.

Here’s a quote that I believe is so true:

The biggest barrier to progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowing. This creates deep barriers to change within us because we think we already know. Author unknown.

For some of us here, we are going to resist change because we think we’re already doing it the best that it could be done, but be careful because when we think we know, but we don’t really know, then we keep God from blessing us the way that he wants. If we think we don’t have margin and we can’t have margin because it can’t work that way in my life, then we eliminate God and his plan in our lives. Margin is necessary, so instead of acting like I know what’s best in my life, I need to ask God to help me find margin and begin to see things according to how he sees them.

Margin is extra time beyond what is required, and that extra time is needed to just catch your breath, slow down, look at what’s right in front of you.

v     Margin gives you time to see the weariness etched on the cashier’s face and it gives you a moment to think, How can I help?

v     Margin gives you the time to see beyond the stomachache of your child and realize that he or she’s worried about something. Or it give you time to contemplate a flower and how God created it,

v     Margin gives you time to realize that you’ve changed. You’re different than last year. God has changed you and you’re better because of it and you take a few moments to thank God for the changes you see.

v     Margin gives you time to think about how blessed you are and it might give you time to thank God for all the riches that he has given you.

v     Margin may give you time to truly see the people around you. I know when my kids where small and I would walk in and check on the kids when they were asleep and many a time I would get all choked up because of the miracle that was lying there in that bed.

Some of the greatest things in life happen in the margins.

Jesus said, But there is need of only one thing, Martha. Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:38-42 (NRSV)

Mary choose what’s best. Mary chose to create margin. Mary choose to create extra space  for the most important things in life. What are you going to do?

Life Link:

Ask “Why are Life Groups important to you?” After everyone has had a chance to share, then provide them with a copy of our Life Group Overview. You could ask everyone to read one of the items on the Overview while going around the circle until all of them have been read. You might invite the group to talk about any item that was mentioned that was new or important to them???

v     Describe one of the best times in your life?

v     Does anyone remember what the message was about on Sunday? Hint: Skipping stone

v     Was there anything in Sunday’s message that challenged you or that you disagreed with?

v     What is margin and why is it important? Adam said most of the best things in life happen in the margins. Do you think he’s right? Why or why not?

v     Our culture challenges us to earn more, do more, and have more, but Jesus challenges us to love more. How are these worldviews opposed to each other? Do you see these two ways of living competing for dominance in your life?

v     Martha thought she was spending her time right, but she had no peace. How can peace or the lack of it, be an indicator as to whether you’re spending your time in a way that honors God?

v     Like a skipping stone, our lives can be very fast paced and shallow, just skipping along the surface of what God has created us for. How does slowing down (creating margin) help us to go deeper in our relationship with God and others?

v     What are some specific things you can do to create margin in your life? Are you going to make it a point of doing these things this week?