Satisfaction: Living a Quality Life
Last summer I was sitting on my deck when a swarm of bees flew in and landed on a small pine tree. I heard the sound way before I recognized what was happening. Rather than making a run for it, I stayed to watch and take pictures. Somewhere I had read that bees are not dangerous when they are swarming (I hope that was right). The bee mass on my tree was about 8 inches wide and 18 inches long. There were certainly hundreds of bees if not more. When it was time to go, they all took off and flew away together.
Sometimes in life we feel like we are surrounded by a swarm of bees which we call “commitments.” We say yes too many times and each yes comes with a stinger. But it is so hard to say no when folks ask again, and it seems it is us or nobody. In fact, what may be going on is that we like to be in charge, and we like to be in control. We like to “make it happen.” But the result of having too many commitments is not good. When we have dozens of tasks, it is pretty hard to do any of them well, and we end up stressed out. As you may remember, it is the tasks which are not done which cause the stress. Burnout is real, and it is hard to recover from it. There was one memorable event I recall that took me several months to recover from. I don’t recommend it.
The truth is that we are not meant to do everything. It is very clear from 1 Cor 12 that God intends people to be different. This passage shows us that we are all uniquely gifted. The passage speaks of spiritual gifts, but it is certainly also true of talents, abilities, personality, etc. This is pretty obvious as we observe our strengths and those of others. We are meant to be good at only some things, not at everything.
Our task is to be honest with ourselves and with others; this is for the benefit of everyone. Though saying no seems wrong initially, it will often feel exactly right later on. A former mentor of mine suggested a 24-hour rule. When asked to do something he would reply, “Let me think about it for 24 hours, and I will get back to you.” He found that most of the time things became much clearer to him once he hung up the phone. Was it his calling? Is this how God wanted him to spend his time? What would need to be sacrificed if he said yes to this new request?
Going a bit further, we can think of it as generating open time which will allow us to say yes to the things we really believe are important for us to do. It sounds like a crazy idea in a go-go world. But it makes sense if you think on it. If we get the things we do poorly out of our lives, we’ll then have time to do the things we’re good at when we are asked to do them.
Satisfaction comes when we are doing what we are really called to do.
When we say no to what we are not good at, we open the door for service to others that will be better than us. The infant church in Jerusalem recognized this when they stated in Acts 6:2, “’It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.’” As a result, they involved others with superior gifts, and everything got done in an orderly way.
Generating time to do what we are called to do is a simple method of what Steve Goss calls “A Quality Life” in Session 10 of the Freedom in Christ Course. A quality life is a life filled with doing righteous and good things that we are good at and called to do. While this might seem a bit vague and hard to live by, we can take comfort in God’s grace and sovereignty. In my experience, there have been many events God shut the door on only to be revealed later as poor choices. While we need to be wise and ask God’s guidance, He is certainly capable of extraordinary intervention. Choose wisely, but remember God is a God of grace, and He is the one in charge. For this we can all be thankful.