"In her book, “Time Saving Tips for Busy Moms,” my wife Carrie gives several techniques she uses to handle laundry for our family of 10. One of her tactics is to assign only one or two days a week as laundry days.
There are several advantages to this approach. It’s true you do have more work on laundry day, but the tradeoff is you don’t have the task of laundry hanging over you all week. You simply assign a day for it and don’t worry about it the rest of the week.
Another advantage is the time it takes to get into the flow or rhythm of any task. Once you have your mind geared to laundry you’re usually better off to stay with it until the job is done instead of having to go through the start-up procedures again.
There are many Scriptures that encourage Christians in the matter of endurance. Applying scriptural principles to chores even as mundane as laundry will help us redeem the time.
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"A man walked in to a Topeka, Kansas Kwik Shop, and asked for all the money in the cash drawer. Apparently, the take was too small, so he tied up the store clerk and worked the counter himself for three hours until police showed up and arrested him.
It seems some people just don’t know when to stop. But knowing when to leave well enough alone is an important skill to gain if we want to be effective for God. In Jesus day the Pharisees were known to be an exacting people, going to great lengths to keep the letter of the law. The problem was they went to extremes beyond the law and created many unscriptural burdens and rituals which they imposed on others.
Household chores such as dusting or cleaning the garage can also be done to extremes and can waste our time. Every activity has a point of diminishing returns. Discerning where that point is will help us redeem the time.
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"You know the feeling. You open the refrigerator door and there’s something green inside. The only problem is it wasn’t green when you put it in there. And it didn’t smell the same as it does now. That’s right. It’s the dreaded leftovers.
Leftovers are never as appetizing as first servings. We only eat leftovers when we have to. Sometimes they’re even what we throw out to the dogs.
When it comes to our time we also have main courses and leftovers. The main course is the good stuff we give prime time to. We plan for it, anticipate it and carefully guard it as a high priority. The leftovers are the final few minutes at night before we fall asleep.
Which kind of time are you giving God? Jesus said in Rev. 3:20 He is standing at the door and knocking. He wants to come in and have fellowship with you. Giving Him your prime time, not just your leftovers, will redeem the time.
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"Leonardo da Vinci was one of the greatest artists of all time. His works include The Mona Lisa and the our Lord’s Last Supper. But Da Vinci was also an excellent architect, musician, philosopher, and scientist. He conducted investigations in geology, botany, hydraulics, mechanics, anatomy, and mathematics. His other abilities included military engineering, city planning, mapmaking, even aviation. He spent years observing the flight patterns of birds and insects and as a result designed an aircraft 400 years before the Wright brothers.
He invented the first military tank, roller bearings, the pocket handkerchief and the wheelbarrow. He left behind 7,500 pages of observations in his journals.
One of his biographers noted that da Vinci, who never married, knew what loneliness was. But, he did not fear it, because he knew that time alone was when the creative mood in him would go to work.
500 years later, you and I are benefiting from da Vinci’s seasons of loneliness. Because, instead of fretting over his loneliness, he chose to redeem the time.
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