One Man Band

I live with a workaholic. Michael is the hardest worker I've ever known. He never complains about it. He can work 16 hour day and I won't hear him say he's tired once. He doesn't take breaks. He works relentlessly on the tasks that he has to get done. What he gets done is the equivalent of 3 men's work. But he can't rest. He can't stop thinking about work when he's home. He has a hard time turning it off.

I know a lot of people like Michael. I'm not like that with my job per se, but I'm like that with the tasks that I need to get done. I bounce from work to school to housework to YoungLife and never let myself get a chance to breathe. TV is background noise for me (so I don't think a bad guy is trying to break in all the time), not entertainment. It's so easy in our fast-paced culture to get sucked into our to-do lists. We LIVE to-do lists, not just write them.

My quiet time today took me to Exodus Ch. 18. Here Moses has been appointed judge over the Israelites, and they come to him with their problems. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, comes to visit and tells Moses,

"What you do is not good. You and these people who come to you will only wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone"(verses 18 & 19).

At first I read this and I thought, Jethro, who the heck are you to talk to Moses like that? This is MOSES! He got the people out of Egypt. He parted the Red Sea. I think he knows what he's doing. In all honesty, I thought the story would be about how Jethro didn't know how much we can do when God is on our side.

BRRRRRRRRR. (That's the sound of a buzzer that my dad used to make at me as a kid when I was wrong.) Jethro tells Moses he should delegate his duties and  make other judges. They will take care of the easy stuff and go to Moses with the hard stuff. And it worked.

Workaholics, Moses couldn't do everything himself, and he parted a sea. I haven't heard of any sea-partings lately, so if you haven't even parted a sea, what makes you think you can do everything alone? MOSES NEEDED HELP. MOSES NEEDED REST. MOSES WAS A HUMAN BEING. Give yourselves a break. You don't have to solve every problem. You don't have to be aware of all of the happenings at work. You don't have to match up every lone sock (that one is for me). If you chase after completing tasks, you'll never get anywhere. It's like running in water against the current. You're just going to wear yourself out. Scripture says that work is good (Ecclesiastes 3:22) but it also reminds us to rest (hence the Sabbath day). God has blessed us with so many things outside of work. We need to remember to take time to enjoy those as well.

So what if you let the dishes stack up a little and they start to smell. Does that change your salvation? So what if you were late to work because you got stuck behind 2 school buses and a grandma. Does that change God's promise? So what if you take a weekend to do nothing even though you've had a project in the house that has been halfway finished for weeks. Does that change your eternity? Live for eternity FIRST and the little things seem a lot littler.

Also, I saw a one man band once, and the music really wasn't that great. It was just a lot of sound.