It’s possible, whether at home or at work, that there are responsibilities you carry out each day and you wonder if the amount of time and effort it takes to complete the task is worth your time. One such responsibility I have that I question is worth the time and effort is writing these ARChive articles.
Now before I share my thoughts on this matter, I would like to thank Cory, Erin and Becky for accepting my invitation to take a turn each month to write one of these articles. I am thankful that you are continually paying attention to those daily experiences that become an emotional hook which eventually turns into your ARChive article. And I am blessed by how you connect the wisdom of God’s Word with your particular experience.
Usually when I finish reading my ARChive articles, it would appear to me that a person could sit down and type out an article in 20 minutes. However, as in the case of this article, it rarely works that way. For me, this is often how it goes. We all know when our articles are due, so we can never use the excuse that we didn’t know it was our turn.
Sometimes not knowing what to write about becomes the challenge, like this week. J I had several things I thought about, but other than one, I didn’t feel strong enough about any of them to write about them.
Other times discerning whether or not I can write about a certain issue often becomes the challenge of writing an ARChive article. I have many experiences and issues that would make for great articles, however, the level of authenticity would be more than some people can handle.
Then there are times when you plan on sitting down to write your article, but something of much more importance comes up. Like, I planned on writing this article on Thursday, but then two pressing issues that took priority popped up and I chose to work on my sermon instead. I thought maybe I could crank out an article after taking care of the second issue, but by that time I had no energy left and so I thought I would get up early on Friday morning and write it. And then wouldn’t you know it, the repairman called to see if he could come early to fix our microwave, so I felt obligated to scoop the driveway first.
The one issue that has created the greatest emotional hook for me this week is the death of my cousin who spoke in our church on December 3. I was able to share some meaningful time with Dave and his family Wednesday afternoon before he died, and then because their Pastor is on vacation, they asked if I would do the memorial service and so I have been thinking a lot about his favorite verse from Romans 8:31, “What then shall we say in response to all these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”
So I was going to write some thoughts about that verse, however, when I started looking into our response “to all these things,” I realized my article was going to be 450 words too long. And so here I am rambling about how difficult it is to write an ARChive article when I should be working on the funeral mediation—an article I’m not sure anyone will read or will actually care about. And I really have to get the funeral mediation done before 4:00 because we have my family Christmas in Sioux Center this evening. And so on occasions like this, I wonder, is it really worth the one hour and eleven minutes it took to put these thoughts on paper?
May all of you be blessed in this New Year, even when doing those things that you aren’t sure are worth your time.
Grace to you and peace, Mike Altena