17 November 2009 Devotion for Today “Extend the Margins” John 10:10, Isa 26:3

17 November 2009 Devotion for Today "Extend the Margins" John 10:10, Isa 26:3

 

This morning I am going to start off by doing something just a little bit different- kind of an exercise or object lesson to get you a little bit involved. First, find a book that is at least 100 pages long and turn to page 37. It doesn't matter what book it is- the fact that you are able to read it at all is because these words set are defined not by the printed matter that you see in front of you, but by the white space to the top, bottom, left and right sides that you normally do not notice. This white space, serving as a border and demarcating the printed matter is gives order and meaning to everything to the inside of the page. This white space is called the margin. This margin is not incidental- for in fact if we didn't have margin on the page, the book you are looking at, would be very difficult if not impossible to read. In fact, the words on the page, without the margin, would be almost incomprehensible. If you are reading a book with no margin on the left side where the book is bound, you would not be able to see the words on that side. It would be so difficult to read that you would just set down that book with no margin and find something else to read.

 

What was the point of that whole illustration? To demonstrate to you that you take margin out of a book or a page and you may not be able to read it, or make much sense- but unfortunately that is what we have done to life. We have literally snatched, chopped, sliced, and otherwise pulled out the margin . But you take the margin out of life, and what you have done is to overload your life so much that its only a matter of time before emotional, financial, spiritual, moral, and physical breakdown is going to occur. An example of this is when you have no margin you end up being 30 minutes late to the doctors office because you were 20 minutes late getting out of the bank because you were 10 minutes late dropping the kids off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from the gas station- and you forgot your wallet! Margin, on the other hand, is having breath left at the top of the staircase, money left at the end of the month, and sanity left at the end of of your kids' adolescence. Marginless is the baby crying and the phone ringing at the same time. Margin is grandma taking the baby for the afternoon. Marginless is being asked to carry a load give pounds heavier than you can lift; margin is a frind to carry half the burden. Marginless is not having time to finish the book you're reading on how to manage stress; margin is having the time to read it twice. Marginless is fatique; margin is energy. Marginless is red ink, margin is black ink. Marginless is hurry, margin is calm. Marginless is anxiety, margin is security; marginless is the disease of our new millennium- but margin is its cure. Have you ever wondered why it is that we have comforts and conveniences that other times in history could only dream about, yet somehow, inspite of the fact that we have them, we are not flourishing under the gifts of modernity as as one would expect. We live in an age of unprecedented breakthroughs in technology, in medicine, in science, and invention. Its an amazing age of progress, and for that we should be thankful.

 

Yet as visible as these achievements have been, our faults demand a glaring prominence of their own: I recently financed a car for roughly the same amount of what I mortgaged my first house for 20 years ago. We have divorce, teenage pregnancy, illicit drug abuse, crime, incarceration rates, one fourth of our population is functionally manic-depressive. Add these to corporate malfeasance, AIDS, litigation rates, unaffordable health care, educational breakdown and functional illiteracy---if our progress is so wonderful, why do we drink and drug to forget our problems? Why are we divorcing and suing at such unprecedented rates? Why is it that we are hearing and seeing so many things like what happened at Columbine and Virginia Tech? Why are people killing themselves-and others, in such numbers? Because our progress has come a price. For all the progress we have in modern life, the rat race that this progress has generated in many was far outweighs the benefits we derive from them.

 

    I do not believe that God ever meant for life to be this hard.    You look at the life of Jesus as you see someone who was never in a hurry, yet He only had three years But when Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly- He was not only talking about eternity. He was also talking about time. Time right here on earth, and how to experience that abundant life of margin that God desires us to have. I don't believe, for example, that God ever meant for us to be so tired and frazzled all the time! Have you ever stopped to wonder why it is that people are so anxious and depressed? Do you think that God meant for one-fourth to one third of population to have to live on the medication we are taking just to cope with one more day? Something is wrong- desperately wrong! And its not just enough to call it sin. to accomplish what God put Him on this earth to do. You never see Jesus stressed-out. Sure you saw Him angry, like the encounter He had with the money changers at the temple, or disappointed- perhaps expressing a little frustration with His disciples because they just couldn't seemd to get what their Master was teaching them. But not even having the basic necessities or comforts of life seemed to bother Him. "Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has no where to lay His head." Here was one who had thousands of people clamoring to make Him a king, to do miracles, healings, preaching sermons on the mount and yet not once did He miss that time to be with His heavenly Father.

    

    Jesus said, I am come that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly! (John 10:10) The abundance of life is found not in how much you may squeeze in a page, but in the margins- the space and time in which God has defined life to take place. Knowing that we have everlasting life is the framework for restoring the margin back into our lives which sin has robbed us of- and to live the kind of life that God wants us to live. When I think of the Psalmists, for example- God speaks through them saying that when God leads us, He leads us beside the still waters. He tells us to be still and know that I am God. Isaiah 26:3
You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.

 

    As you approach the holiday season, remember this, the extent to which you enjoy this next month or so ahead of you will be enjoyed in the same proportion as to the margins you have in your life. Before you make any plans and crowd the season with activities, focus on the margins and extend them first. You will enjoy the holidays so much better.

 

    Have a blessed day!