Living
in a culture of instant gratification, many of us march to the mindset, “Gotta
have it – and gotta have it now!”
There are advantages to this; Walking into a fast-food restaurant and not
having to wait; being able to quickly find virtually anything on the Internet;
being able to communicate to others without delay, whether by phone, text or
instant message.
But as
with many advantages in life, instant living has drawbacks. One of them is the increasing
inability to distinguish the urgent from the truly important.
 |
| Days can fly by as urgent demands crowd out important matters. |
Years
ago, Charles E. Hummel wrote an engaging little booklet, The Tyranny of the Urgent. He stated, “Your greatest danger is letting the urgent
things crowd out the important.” This seemed cryptic the first time I read it.
Aren’t urgent things always important?
For instance, if you get a
call from your boss instructing you to do something immediately, isn’t that
important? If your smartphone rings while you’re with loved ones or
close friends, shouldn’t you check to see
who’s calling?
As I pondered Hummel’s
statement, however, I began to realize that indeed, urgent things are not
always important – and important things aren’t always urgent. The challenge is
learning to distinguish between the two, and then responding appropriately.
Another Hummel observation provided
clarification: “There is an insidious tendency to neglect important tasks that
do not have to be done today – or even this week.” At first glance this
seems a tad confusing. If things don’t have to be done today, or this week,
doesn’t that indicate they’re not all that important?
Once again, after a bit of
thought, we start to understand what he meant. Sometimes urgent things also are
important – if someone’s having a heart attack, they need immediate treatment. If
there’s a fire, we must try to put it out. Or call 911. But if a friend asks us
for a favor, that doesn’t mean we must drop everything to comply right then.
Many children’s trust has
been shattered by promises repeatedly broken by parents because something “urgent”
always seems to arise at the last minute. Or intended meetings with friends never
happen because the “urgent” keeps snatching time from our schedules.
Having spent much of my
working career reacting to deadlines, I know how easily the urgent can crowd
out the important. Even now, I wrestle with the conflict between longer-term
writing projects and more immediate, short-term tasks that “need” to be
completed first.
In the Scriptures, we see an
example of “urgent vs. important” in the lives of sisters Mary and Martha. The
gospel of Luke gives a quick synopsis:
“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named
Martha opened her home to him. She had
a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the
preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you
care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’
‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and
upset about many things, but few things are needed – or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what
is better, and it will not be taken away from her’” (Luke 10:38-41).
At first glance, it’s easy to
side with Martha. There’s a meal to prepare. Things to be done. Martha was
slaving away, while her sister was “chilling,” listening to what Jesus had to
say. But as He often did, Jesus was using this for a teachable moment. The
preparations preoccupying Martha’s attention could wait a few minutes. Time
with Jesus, however, was a priceless moment that couldn’t be recaptured later.
Seems to me this “tyranny of the urgent” impedes our ability
to establish and maintain a close, intimate walk with God. Hummel also wrote
about this in his booklet: “But
the root of all sin is self-sufficiency – independence from the rule of God.
When we fail to wait prayerfully for God’s guidance and strength, we are saying
with our actions, if not with our words, that we do not need him. How much of
our service is actually a ‘going it alone’?”
Psalm
37:7 admonishes, “Rest in the Lord, and
wait patiently for Him.” This “resting” and “waiting” run counter to the
instincts of our instant world, worshiping at the altar of the urgent. But if
we’re to truly become all the Lord intends for us to be, we’ve got to discover
how not to sacrifice the important on that altar.
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