When I surveyed . . . what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless.
—Ecclesiastes 2:11
He was seemingly indefatigable: up and at ’em before dawn and still going strong long after dusk. He was a whiz at business—and an infrequent presence at home.
“I’m selling out and retiring,” he told me one day. Said he’d made a lot of money, and now he was going to spend some of it traveling—taking his wife on some well-deserved cruises.
Three weeks later, I preached his funeral.
Cultivate a sense of proportion in the investment of your energies. Exhausting yourself in the chase to the point of having no time or strength left to enjoy the fruit of your labor is mismanagement.
Any application here to “church work?” Yes. Carry your share of the load—but beware of taking on so many committees and commitments that your drained disposition is less than pleasant at home.
Put first things first.