The king said to me (the queen also was sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me, and I set him a date. [Nehemiah 2:6 (NSRV)]
“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,” is what’s known as Parkinson’s Law. Writing those words in 1955, Parkinson wasn’t talking about deadlines; he was taking aim at the British Civil Service and government bureaucracies that become less efficient as they increase in size. Nevertheless, later studies have shown that without strict time constraints, we tend to waste time and work takes longer than necessary to complete.
When this pandemic began, all sorts of obligations were cleared from my calendar and, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, I was sure lots of writing would get done. How wrong I was! Like others who found themselves with excess time and no deadlines or sense of urgency, instead of getting more done, I’m accomplishing less.
When Jerusalem fell to Babylon, the Temple was destroyed and the city left in shambles. After Zerubabbel led the first group of exiles back, it took twenty years to rebuild the Temple. Seventy years after its completion, however, the city walls were still in ruins. When Nehemiah asked King Artaxerxes permission to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the city, the King asked how long he would be gone. Given Nehemiah’s weighty responsibilities in court, it’s logical to assume that the king would not agree to a lengthy absence. As the king’s cup-bearer, Nehemiah’s presence was essential to the king. His duties included being the chief financial officer and bearer of his signet ring. As the king’s wine taster, his job was to sample royal beverages to test for poison.
Before making his request, Nehemiah must have carefully considered both the amount of time necessary for such a task and the length of time the king would allow his absence. Although we don’t know Nehemiah’s answer, the king found it reasonable and the men agreed upon a time frame. With no target date, the wall hadn’t been repaired in over ninety years; with a deadline, the project was completed in a record 52 days!
Although Scripture mentions Nehemiah returning to Babylon twelve years later, it’s difficult to think the king would have agreed to be without his cup-bearer for that length of time. It’s more likely that a specific deadline, perhaps as brief as two months, had been set and Nehemiah returned promptly after the wall’s completion. Having shown his excellent leadership qualities, it probably was then that Artaxerxes appointed Nehemiah Judah’s governor and sent him back to Jerusalem. If the King originally had agreed to a twelve year absence, I suspect the wall may have taken nearly that long to complete!
Deadlines motivate us; they keep us from growing lethargic or unconcerned. Let us never forget that we all live with two deadlines: our own personal expiration date and the world’s. Although we know that both cutoff dates will occur, we don’t know when. Let us never grow lax and apathetic or lose a sense of urgency about doing the Lord’s work. Viewing every day as a gift, we must use our time wisely and enthusiastically to glorify God and bring about His Kingdom. Let us live this day to the fullest as if it were our last. After all, it very well could be!
In an article about how our post-pandemic new normal will evolve, the author suggested a process for businesses to identify what needs changing in their post COVID-19 world. As a way of illustrating their method, there was an aerial photograph of a college campus quad. Before designing the walkways for this large green area surrounded on four sides by university buildings, the landscape architects simply sodded the field and observed how the students used the grassy expanse. After a while, the beaten down grass indicated the students’ preferred traffic patterns and it was on those favored paths that they finally placed paved walkways. At first glance, the asymmetric sidewalks seemed random but, once the process was explained, the strange arrangement of paths made sense. It was easy to see how they accommodated people’s tendency to take shortcuts and cut across corners.
Several years ago, while spending the winter in the mountains, our morning walk took us by an art gallery. We frequently stopped to chat with the owner, look at the latest acquisitions and watch the progress of a local sculptor who had set up shop in the gallery. Working in clay, he was crafting the model for what would eventually be a cast bronze sculpture. As the final shape began to emerge, the artist continued to tweak it with small changes, a little pinch here or a small adjustment there, each time making it a better representation of a cowboy and his string of horses. Envisioning the final product and assured that it was nearly ready for casting, my husband and I made a pre-cast purchase of the piece.
I used to look forward to our occasional stops in the bank where a tray of homemade cookies always was laid out for their customers. I admit to having no will-power when it came to their white chocolate chip/macadamia nut cookies. With a hint of lemon, they were so delicious that I searched the internet to find the recipe so I could skip the bank visit. Several recipes came close but none were quite right so, using those as a guide, I developed a recipe that met the taste test!
Last summer, we moved permanently to our home in Florida. Knowing we’d no longer be spending any time in the cold winters of the Midwest, I packed up our winter attire for the charity resale shop. Along with the many coats, scarves, hats, and boots, I had a pile of winter mittens and gloves. Along with our super warm double ragg mittens, my husband and I had an assortment of wool, fleece, and leather gloves. He had a pair of heavy duty insulated Carhartts and I had some polyester/spandex gloves I often wore while walking. While packing up the rest of the house, I came across work gloves in the furnace room, rubber gloves by the wash tub, gardening gloves in the garage, silicone heat resistant gloves by the grill, fingerless gloves in the gym bag, vinyl gloves in the first aid kit, a pair of oven mitts, and even some chemically treated silver polishing gloves! Each pair had a specific use but, without a hand inside any of them, they were nothing but empty shells.
When Pat died, it was difficult to find words of comfort for her grieving husband. A non-believer, he has no faith in Jesus, no understanding of the soul, no hope of eternity, and no anticipation of Christ’s return. Distance and timing kept me from attending Pat’s Celebration of Life and, because we rarely saw one another, I’m not sure I felt her absence until today when I received a letter from her husband. With the letter was a bookmark made for her Celebration of Life. It had her picture and some sweet words about memories filling our hearts, time healing our souls, and the peace of knowing there’s one more angel in heaven. To a non-believer, those words may be comforting but, to me, they were empty (along with being theologically incorrect). I’ve never understood how non-believers find it so easy to believe in heaven and angels but so hard to believe in judgment, hell, God, or Jesus.
