Accomplishing Those Important Tasks

July, 2002

by: Lisa Hughes

Oh the joys of planning out your day and determining what you want to accomplish. Oh the dejection of reviewing your day and realizing that nothing you set out to do that day was accomplished! I take such comfort knowing that the mind of man plans his way but the Lord directs his steps (Prov. 16:9). How kind God is when He reminds us in His Word that He will accomplish what concerns us (Ps. 138:8). Knowing those things helps me not to grow discouraged when my day isn't quite what I had planned. Read what Annie Keary, who lived in the 1800's, had to say about this dilemma.

I think I find most help in trying to look on all the interruptions and hindrances to work that one has planned out for oneself as discipline, trials sent by God to help one against getting selfish over one's work. Then one can feel that perhaps one's true work — one's work for God — consists in doing some trifling haphazard thing that has been thrown into one's day. It is not a waste of time, as one is tempted to think, it is the most important part of the work of the day — the part one can best offer to God. After such a hindrance, do not rush after the planned work; trust that the time to finish it will be given sometime, and keep a quiet heart about it.

Keep planning and working diligently to accomplish those important tasks, but do not grow anxious with the interruptions in your day. God has a plan in all that too.

---