I'm not sure about the name of this phenomenon. I read about it somewhere and have tried to track down where I saw it, but have had no luck. For lack of a better term, I'll call it the “fill-it-up” phenomenon. This is the tendency for us to fill up whatever we're allotted.

Perhaps a person is given a 30 minute job to do but is allotted 2 hours to get it done. Instead of doing the job in 30 minutes and going back to ask what else he can do, he'll, more than likely, stretch the job out to fill up the two hours. No matter how much money we earn, do we not somehow find a way to spend it? “Oh if I just had this much of a raise then I'd give more to the Lord or have more in my savings, or...” On and on it goes. It rarely happens that way. Whatever raise one gets is usually spent on something and not returned to the Lord or invested in savings.

Is not the same true with our time? Consider the amount of time our forebears had. No more than us, right? Of course. How is it then that they were able to til the soil, plant the crops, tend the crops and harvest the crops. It doesn't stop there. After harvesting came the storing and preserving. The produce must be dried, canned, or somehow preserved. Perhaps corn and grain need to be milled. Now the meat has to be hunted or livestock butchered. Then comes the preserving via salt curing or smoking. To prepare a meal one needed to cut firewood to heat the stove. I get tired just writing these things. Yet families all over the frontier did this and more season after season, year after year. Where did they get the time?

Consider all of our modern conveniences. I believe that one could sustain himself with little more than a small refrigerator and microwave oven. With all of the pre-packaged, frozen convenience foods available, variety for the palate would never be a problem. Open the package, cut a slit in the plastic, set the timer and “bon appetit”.

My father was a strong believer in preaching with visual aids. He would use charts made from bed-sheets, flannel boards. He even learned how to make his own slides and film-strips. I remember it taking him a whole week to make one filmstrip or slide show to illustrate his sermon. Add to this the time needed to study for the sermon and his bible classes; Then there was visiting the sick and shut-ins. Where did he get the time?

Today I can make a power point slide show to illustrate my sermons in about 45 minutes. I have a 500 volume library in my computer and available at the touch of a finger or the click of a mouse. Yet I still have more books than shelf-space and it still takes me all week to get my sermons ready.

Why don't any of us have more time for the things that are most important to us? Why do we persist in filling up our lives with superfluous junk? Well.... You'll just have to wait until next week for part 2, because I'm out of time and out of space... Again.