This is that time of year when many of us have a tiny lull before life gets crazy. Summer break is winding down and school never starts gently and peacefully. Nope, school starts like a freight train. From that very first open house event, everyone wants your time and money.
PTO wants you to volunteer to help with a dozen events. Sports teams want volunteers to man the concession stand or sell something. I have seen three posts already in the past week for sports teams fund-raisers. There are committee positions that need to be filled too. The teachers ask for help with supplies in their rooms and volunteers for various celebrations and events.
And that’s just the schools. Many churches take a summer break too and when school starts, so do all of their programs. They need volunteers to teach kids from ages four to eighteen and volunteers to help with youth groups. They need volunteers to lead adult Sunday school classes. They need volunteers to help organize various events. They need volunteers to sit on committees. They need volunteers to visit people, to greet people and to make meals.
Let’s face it, churches and schools, need lots of volunteers. I was thinking about all of the entities that need assistance this time of year. They are all good and worthy causes. We would often love to help them all, but truthfully, we can’t.
I came across this broken branch of my tomato plant that illustrates this perfectly.
When the fruit gets too heavy and too far away from the main trunk, the branch will break underneath the weight.
This tomato plant had huge, bright red tomatoes growing on it. I kept giving them just one more day to get a little bigger and a little redder, but while some of the large tomatoes were ripening, smaller ones began growing bigger and the weight on the branch became too much. Something had to give and it broke.
The same can happen to us when we say yes to everything we are asked to do, or that we feel we should do. All of the opportunities I listed above were good, but one person can’t do all of them. God calls each of us to do different tasks because we are all gifted in different areas.
Jesus said, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” John 15:4
It seems to me that this is a really good time to spend some quiet time in prayer before the chaos starts. We can ask God for direction in the coming school year. What should we say yes to? What is He calling us to do? What things are just going to frustrate us and eat up our time and peace?
We should also remember that sometimes when we say yes to things we aren’t called to do, we are taking someone else’s place who was called to do that task. We can’t do it all and the call to follow Jesus isn’t to stay as busy as possible.
He says he will give us rest, not make us run a rat race. When we are too busy, we can’t hear God’s voice. Maybe we should hold that truth a little more closely. Let’s choose wisely and intentionally this year.
Have an awesome day!
Wendy 🙂