Busy

Raquel Queiroz da Costa Arrais, Associate Director, Women’s Ministries, General Conference of SDA

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 NIV

For some of us, there is never enough time in a day to do all things that we need and want to do. Schedules fill up quickly, work consumes our thoughts at night, family and friends need our attention, and then there’s this thing called sleep. How do you fit it all in? What do you let drop? We can all relate. We are serving and leading; our days are becoming busier and busier. We schedule one thing after another after another, leaving us without time to rest or be restored. We are running on empty most of the time.
The Bible teaches us another way to live: to keep our hearts and our minds focused on those things that really matter. The psalmist said, “Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is” (Psalm 39:4, NIV).
God gives us all 24 hours in each day – 1,440 minutes. With this amount of time, even if we spend 20 minutes in our personal devotions, we still have 1,420 minutes left for everything else. Isn’t that wonderful?
The question is this: How do we make these devotion-time minutes worthwhile in our very packed days? Let me suggest some essentials.
Each day choose where and how you will spend your moments with God, giving Him the time He deserves. Three things that I have been practicing have proven very helpful as I pause to wait on the Lord: (1) meet with God, (2) listen to God, and (3) talk to God. Meeting with God requires commitment; a plan. Listening to God requires time to be still; a pause. Talking to God requires communion; an open heart. We need to accept His invitation, “Come to Me and learn from Me.” It is important to put our time in God’s hands, especially at the beginning of each new day, making every moment count! As we read in Psalm 36:4, being aware that our days are numbered helps us to focus on the things that bring real happiness, peace, and purpose in life.
With the psalmist, we can also pray, “Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered – how fleeting my life is” (Psalm 39:4 NLT).

In His Presence ©2018 by General Conference Women’s Ministries Department

Raquel Queiroz da Costa Arrais, Associate Director, Women’s Ministries, General Conference of SDA