FAITH: Living With Margin

"Margin is the space that once existed between our load and our limits. Margin is the space between vitality and exhaustion. It is our breathing room."
- Swenson, The Overload syndrome, pgs 14, 132

At Pton, there is almost a felt need to pack each day with as much as we possibly can. This comes both from the inner drive that helped us get here and from outside pressure to excel in everything and work hard and play hard. Carpe diem... and noctem... as continually test the limits of my abilities. We're good at that, aren't we? But at what expense do we do this? There's the sleep deprivation and the need to de-stress with sometimes drastic measures, but there's also the inevitable neglect of others as the need to go from one class to another activity to meals to a workout to practice makes compassion for others atrophy. I see it all too much in myself.

"As we have seen, Jesus never seemed in a hurry. Time urgency was not only absent from his life, it was conspicuously absent. Creating a margin - that space between our load and our limits - is perphaps one of the best ways to put a Christ-like sponaneity and interrupt-ability back into our lives. Margin blunts hurry and allows us to focus on divine appointments God sends our way."
- Swenson, 132

And then there's also the issue of what a lack of margin does for one's relationship with God.

"It is normally impossible to hear from God when our hands are constantly full of our own agenda and activities, and there is no margin in lur lives."
- Pastor Buster Brown, East Cooper Baptist Church

I neglect prayer and time reading and meditating on Scriptures when I'm on overdrive trying to complete everything that I have on the schedule. We can't recieve all of the gifts God wishes to lavishly pour out upon us when our hands are full. If we are to love others as Jesus first loved us, we must first allow ourselves to be filled with the reality of his mercy and grace. Only then, out of the overflow of our thanksgiving, may we share with the world the message of hope that is our strength.