One phone call

It was Tuesday morning, October 17, 1995.

I had just gotten off of the phone with Mom. She started out the conversation with, “I’m not quite sure how to tell you this, but…”

“But” sounded pretty ominous to me, and as it turned it, it was—or so I thought at the moment. Following a recent MRI scan, her surgeon discovered what he described as another “spot” on her brain. I say “another” because scarcely two years earlier, Mom had undergone brain surgery in order to remove a golf-ball size tumor.

I’m happy to announce that now, some sixteen years later, she’s doing fine. That spot was just a false alarm. But at that precise moment, when she first called me, I don’t know that either of us could have been described as “fine.”

That episode, and more specifically, that phone call really made an impact on me. It changed everything that day. What was so important at 9:30 was trivial by 9:45. What my Day-Timer deemed important earlier in the day as being urgent, was summarily crossed off that day’s to-do list all together. One phone call put life in perspective.

Sickness has a way of doing that to us, doesn’t it? By that I mean that cancer and tumors and malignancies and the such like have a way of grabbing our attention and reminding us of what really counts.

It is so easy for us to become side-tracked and pursue those things which are clamorous and pressing. Then we get one of those phone calls that begins with, “I don’t quite know how to tell you this…”

The truth of the matter is, those kinds of phone calls come all-too frequently, don’t they (Psalm 39:4,5; Proverbs 27:1; Isaiah 40:6-7; James 4:14)? They shout in our consciousness as to what really deserves our time, energy, and interest.

May I ask a personal question, good reader? What will be the next item on your agenda after you finish reading this message? Is it really important?

Please don’t fall victim to the tyranny of the urgent.
Evaluate how you use your time, look through your schedule, and then pursue the real priorities in your life.

Do you need to make an apology? Do you need to stop procrastinating and put on Christ? Do you need to tell someone, “I love you”? Do you need to delve into the Word?

Take care of the most important thing (Luke 10:41,42;). Right now. “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil”(Ephesians 5:16).

by Mike Benson