The Important and the Urgent

I find myself thinking that God and I are okay, at least on the main points. I have nagging feelings that we are missing each other but not on the big things. “Beware of ever thinking, “Oh, that thing in my life doesn’t matter much.” The fact that it doesn’t matter much to you may mean that it matters a great deal to God. Nothing should be considered a trivial matter by a child of God.”

One of our great defense mechanism is “minimization.” Each day we strive to “hit the high points” and “do the important things.” Tragically, when we have time to reflect, we often realized we missed the important things. We confuse the urgent and the important. Don’t you hate in when you are  at a place of business, talking to someone there, and they stop the conversation to pick up the phone. That’s a case of confusing the urgent and the important. The same kind of confusion causes folks to stop what they are doing multiple times a day to “check emails” or to “answer a text.” As the illustration demonstrates, some things are urgent but not important; some are urgent and important; some are not urgent but important; some are not urgent and not important. Ideally, we would deal with the urgent and important first and then the not urgent but important. Sadly, most of us tend to respond mostly to the urgent, whether important or not.

We need to recognize that there are important things in our lives that are getting ignored because they don’t tug at our sleeve or squeak loud enough to get our attention. These important but not urgent things tend to come to mind at the end of a long day when it’s easy to put them off again. Sometimes its a loved one who needs our attention and sometimes it’s God trying to teach us something. “Whenever God causes a doubt about something, stop it immediately, no matter what it may be. Nothing in our lives is a mere insignificant detail to God.”

Dear God. Forgive me for confusing the urgent and the important. Please let the important speak with more volume to me until I recognize and respond. I don’t want to miss the important things you have for me for in doing so I will miss your greatest blessings.