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What’s in your Twenty-Four?

Twenty-four hours. One thousand, four hundred, forty minutes. That is how much time each of us gets each and every day to make things happen. Multiply that times seven to get one hundred sixty-eight — 168 — hours in a week. So why don’t we all have enough time?

I heard someone say today that someone else doesn’t have time to do something that’s important. I just looked at her and asked, “Why not? She has the same twenty-four hours in the day as the rest of us.” Once one of my students came to me with the excuse of “I didn’t have time to get my work done.” I asked her if she’d had time to play with a friend, to which she answered in the affirmative. I told her, “If you had time to play, you had time to get your work done.”

Sometimes, there just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. I get it. I go through those days, too. They usually happen right around the time of big events, so they’re not everyday occurrences. Some days, the craziness and crammed up days are scheduled. When I wake up, I know that’s ahead of me. Nothing else will fit in those days, and as it is, 1:00 a.m. sees me still working, still pushing through the last little bit of work before I crash in exhausted slumber.

Then there are the other days. You know the ones I mean. You get up and get things done. At the end of the day, you have an extra thirty minutes or even an hour or two to focus on that something else that may be important. In my days, my work day often starts when our school day ends, so I could conceivably be “on” as mom and teacher for eleven hours then turn around and snag an extra hour or two of work before bed. When it comes to that time I have to be productive, that time I must use and finesse for the sake of efficiency, I have a choice: I can buckle down and get my work done, or I can piddle away the time chatting with friends, cruising social media, or playing games.

Then there are weekends. It is quite common for me to use Saturdays as make-up days. Sundays, too, if I absolutely must, but I try to keep sabbath on Sundays. When I have important priorities, like taking courses, working, or catching up on things for the house, then those take precedence over every thing else. When that writing course or that online class on publishing will help me advance my career and ultimately benefit my family as a result, then forget fun! I don’t mind being anhedonic for the short-term when there is so much delight on the other side long-term. After all, I only have 168 days a week to get that week’s tasks done, so I better prioritize my time because once it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s no getting it back.

This is the opportunity cost of time. It’s just like with money. If you have a task that needs to get done, and you need to spend five hours a week completing it, then you have budgeted that five hours for that task. If you then burn part or all of that time in talking to friends, playing games, or running all over town for fun, then you don’t get those five hours back. They’re gone. *poof* Disappeared.

I no longer hear “I don’t have time” from myself or anyone else. We have time. We just have to decide how we’re going to invest our time. Often, if we have less fun with our time now, we’ll have the time and money to have more fun with our time later. It’s a simple concept: Work first, play later.

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Ministry

How Pro-Life Are You?

The question has come up for many people lately: How can Christians, even evangelical Christians, support a president who has shamelessly broken most of the commandments, brags about having broken them, and continues to violate them without remorse, regrets, or repentance? How can Christians support a president who falls far from the Jesus mandate to “Love one another”? It’s been my observation and experience that these folks are single-issue voters: Abortion. It doesn’t matter how reprehensible or abhorrent a candidate speaks or behaves; if she or he promises to make abortion illegal, then these evangelical Christians will vote for them.

But what does it mean to be pro-life? Does it just mean to be anti-abortion? A true pro-life ethic is pro-life from womb to tomb. Let’s take a look at what that means.

  • Pro-life means valuing the life of the fetus. It honors this life by wanting free or affordable prenatal care for the pregnant mother.
  • Pro-life means valuing the lives of children. It wants every child to have enough nourishing food and clean water to thrive in life and school.
  • Pro-life means valuing the health of all people. It believes that free or affordable healthcare is crucial to ensuring a healthier population. (Recent studies have shown that access to affordable birth control methods have led to a decrease in unwanted pregnancies, which, of course, has led to a decrease in abortions.)
  • Pro-life means valuing the safety and well-being of non-Americans, too. It abhors the idea of families of any skin color being ripped apart and innocent children being caged like animals.
  • Pro-life means valuing the nutrition needs of all people. It seeks to eliminate food deserts–areas in urban centers where healthy, affordable food is unavailable. It also seeks an equitable distribution of food resources so that no person should go hungry.
  • Pro-life means valuing the planet that sustains us. It acknowledges climate change and humanity’s sin in not exercising the stewardship over creation that God entrusted to us. It wants to be proactive in reversing the damage we have done to the earth so that future generations have a planet that will sustain and nourish their lives.
  • Pro-life means valuing the dignity of all humans. It recognizes the humanity we each possess as beings made in the image of God. It allows people to choose not to burden their families with exhaustive life-saving measures when death is imminent.
  • Pro-life means valuing the mental health and safety of all people. It seeks to restore mental and emotional wholeness to people with fractured psyches before they act in violent ways against innocent people.

If any one of those points bothers or angers you, then you would do well to reexamine what it means to be “pro-life.” A true, holy, God-honoring pro-life ethic cherishes all life from womb to tomb. It not only seeks to eliminate the need for abortions, but it also cares about people after they are born, ensuring they have adequate housing, food, and healthcare. This holy pro-life ethic also determines to take steps to reverse or stop climate change; being good stewards of the earth God gave us; and making a healthy, life-sustaining home for all of God’s creation, be it plant, animal, or human.

If you cannot ascribe to each of these items and recognize that all of these (and probably several I didn’t think of) are part of a pro-life ethic, then you need to change your tune.

You’re not pro-life; you’re just pro-fetus.

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