The Scene: Some precious time in the Word, a little breakfast, prayers shared. Day set to begin.

The items on the to-do-list: Errands, laundry/cleaning, Wisdom & Learning Time with my three. It’s Monday.

Hurry calls. Go a little faster. Push a little more. Rush now the day won’t wait, time won’t slow, and you won’t get it all done. Hurry tells the truth, but bids us sin with an undisclosed lie, makes a fool of us with a false promise. The lie? That with hurry, and her very close companion worry, we will get it all done… The end of check marks, after all, is joy… And there stands a lie that is a world away from the truth.

I hear myself saying, Let’s go do our errands first.

Big hazel eyes turn up to me. Why mommy? Can’t we do Wisdom & Learning Time first?

Hmmm. And hadn’t I thought just the day before that I need to calm the hurry and do first things first. Teach my children before the day runs away with us? There’s all sorts of grace in this. Of course, there is not a thing inherently sinful about doing errands before teaching time, but it might be the wrong priority? It might be a bow to hurry’s deceiving lie?

Maybe all our thoughts of I don’t have time for prayer, I have to…..

If I can just get …. done then I can have some real time in the Word.

After I go …. and …. then I can spend some good time reading to the kids. 

We go with hurry and we don’t listen to God. We don’t hear the begging voices of our children, the needs of our own husband. We’re in the spin cycle and the machine is off kilter. We’re working hard to get ourselves aligned so all this goes smoothly, but the truth is there’s too much in the load, too much in our lives, and we still haven’t learned to say no.

Just like cars on the interstate, life blurs the faster you go. If fullness of life is what you want, to live it you have to go slow enough to listen to God, be sober-minded enough to learn from Scripture, humble enough to know it will never be all done, wise enough to realize you’ll never be sad you gave your husband and children your whole self.

There’s freedom in the disciplines of grace the Lord is offering us in the great halls of His Word, in the open throne room of prayer.~

There’s freedom to hug a set of gorgeous children and kiss all over their smudgy faces. There’s time to watch the sunlight fall gleaming on a lovely head of hair. Let them often receive the gift of mommy’s full attention; not mommy’s full obsession, but attention, yes. There’s grace to say no. There’s joy in giving the right yeses. And hurry’s lie doesn’t have spin you wild into a tangled disordered mess. Recognize the lie; receive the grace and live there.

Can’t we do Wisdom & Learning Time first?

Why yes! We can. 

Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way. Proverbs 19:2~