This morning I was a few minutes late to work because I was working on a video I had filmed at work two years ago tomorrow. Our office did a mocumentary on Groundhog Day which I hosted, did all the video editing, and put together a DVD with the video and outtakes. An easier and less time consuming job, I’m sure, for someone more gifted than I at media production.
Just last night and this morning alone I put in about 10 hours of work having to make several corrections on it due to the video editing software malfunctioning (thank you very much Pinnacle). That doesn’t count the time filming and the editing time I had put in up to that point. With all the time and effort put into it and feeling such a sense of urgency this morning so much so that I was willing to be late to work it really made me stop and consider how I spend my time and what I consider as “urgent”.
The conviction of the Holy Spirit even now floods over me as I reflect on my morning. Why was this of all things something I stressed over and at several points became very frustrated about? All over the world there are great atrocities happening such as starvation, homelessness, poverty, genocide, and to top it all off over 4 billion people in the world who are lost and going to hell; and this video is the thing I chose this morning to be the most concerned about. Oh, God, how evil and selfish my heart is. What a Waste of Haste!
This was not necessarily a bad thing, putting together something that would bring joy and humour to the lives of my co-workers. You might even say it was a noble effort (my co-workers definitely would say this because it got us all out of work for about 25 minutes). But the value of the issue was nowhere near worth the focus it received. My concern and conviction stems from the fact that not once this week or this past month have I been that overwelmed with urgency about people who are without Christ headed straight to Hell, or even about my own relationship with the Father. Oh, God, forgive my apathy and misdirected concern. Help me not waste my haste on trivial, temporal matters, but give my whole attention and life to eternal issues that have infinite value for my life and the lives of others. Let not my life be wasted.
Watch out, brothers, so that there won’t be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that departs from the living God. But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception. – Hebrews 3:12-13
