Richard Swenson, a physician and visionary author, penned Margin in 2004, yet its message has only grown more urgent in our fast-paced, overextended world. Drawing on his medical expertise and personal insight, Swenson dissects the pressures of modern life and offers a remedy for the chaos that threatens to consume us.#ad
The book’s structure reflects his holistic approach:
Part One: The Problem
Swenson confronts the pain we experience in an age of rapid progress:
- Pain of Progress: “Our relationships are being starved to death by velocity. No one has the time to listen, let alone love.”
- Pain of Problems: “We are playing a different game by different rules on a different stage than any other people in the history of the world.”
- Pain of Stress: “No one in the history of humankind has ever had to live with the number and intensity of stressors we have today. They are unprecedented.”
- Pain of Overload: “The spontaneous tendency of our culture is to inexorably add detail to our lives. We must now deal with more ‘things per person’ than at any other time in history.”
Part Two: The Prescription – Margin
Swenson introduces margin as “the space between our load and our limits.” For most of us, that space is vanishingly small. He advocates reclaiming margin in critical areas of life:
- Emotional Energy
- Physical Energy
- Time
- Finances
Part Three: The Prognosis – Health
The final section offers hope. Swenson prescribes health through timeless virtues:
- Contentment: “Cultivate contentment; desire less.”
- Simplicity: "Slow down."
- Balance: "Focus on loving relationships."
- Rest: "[Our] busyness come from a cultural value system that idolizes productivity."
Swenson writes from a Christian perspective, grounding his solutions in spiritual and biblical truths. However, his insights transcend religious boundaries, speaking to the universal pain of our modern existence. He doesn't shy away from stark realities but instead offers a way forward—a way to rediscover space, sanity, and soulfulness in an overburdened world.
One of the most poignant affirmations of this book's relevance to me comes from one of Seth Godin's recent blog posts. He observed:
“The problem with getting what you want is that now you have a hole, because you don’t want that thing anymore, you have it. We then are on a cycle, eager to find a new thing to want. There’s a more resilient path: To commit to wanting what you have.”
If your soul feels frayed by the demands of modern life, Margin will remind you how to breathe again. Swenson’s wisdom has the power to inspire, to calm, and to guide you toward a life of intentional, meaningful balance. Dive into my Kindle highlights and let this timeless message change your perspective—and your pace.
Notebook for
Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives
Citation (APA): Swenson, R. A. (2014). Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
CHAPTER 1: MARGINLESS LIVING
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THE CONDITIONS OF modern- day living devour margin.
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Marginless is hurry; margin is calm.
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Marginless is the disease of the new millennium; margin is its cure.
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Most don’t realize that pain and the absence of margin are related.
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I know of the weight of marginless living because for a long time it sat on my chest.
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Decades ago I paid the ransom and purchased back margin, a decision that cost me significant income. Yet it was one of the wisest purchases I’ve ever made. I have no regrets.
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There is a psychic instability in our day that prevents peace from implanting itself very firmly in the human spirit.
PART ONE: THE PROBLEM PAIN
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stress, frustration, and oftentimes even despair unexpectedly accompany our unrivaled prosperity.
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For every problem that has a solution, there is a solution that brings another problem.
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We grew to assume that the solution to any problem could be confidently entrusted to progress.
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These patients are stressed, depressed, and exhausted. Some are desperate. Their jobs are insecure. Their farms have been repossessed. They are over their heads in debt. Their marriages are in trouble. They worry about the cultural forces nipping at the heels of their children.
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no social supports, no roots, no community. Their stomachs won’t stop burning, and they can’t sleep at night.
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In a general sense, those cultures with the most progress are the same as those with the least margin.
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Margin has been stolen away, and progress was the thief. If we want margin back, we will first have to do something about progress.
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Axiom #1: Progress works by differentiating our environment, thus always giving us more and more of everything faster and faster.
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The manner in which progress evolves, therefore, ALWAYS results in more and more of everything faster and faster.
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It is impossible for progress to give us less and less slower and slower.
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Axiom #2: The spontaneous flow of progress is toward increasing stress, change, complexity, speed, intensity, and overload.
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Axiom #3: All humans have physical, mental, emotional, and financial limits that are relatively fixed.
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Axiom #4: The profusion of progress is on a collision course with human limits. Once the threshold of these limits is exceeded, overload displaces margin.
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Axiom #5: On the unsaturated side of their limits, humans can be open and expansive. On the saturated side of these limits, however, the rules of life totally change.
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We must have some room to breathe. We need freedom to think and permission to heal. Our relationships are being starved to death by velocity. No one has the time to listen, let alone love.
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Our children lay wounded on the ground, run over by our high-speed good intentions.
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the lack of margin is a much greater component of our pain than most realize.
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When mobility began to tear apart community, we took little notice.
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Our paradigm does not know how to accommodate this type of data. If you are better off, then how can you be worse off?
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We should have known from the start there was more to life than material and cognitive well-being.
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Should we jettison progress and start over? That would not be wise. We do not really wish to abandon its many benefits. But neither do we any longer wish to endure its complications.
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we must regain control of progress; and second, we must redirect it.
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As we subjugate progress, we first make it subservient to our greater goals and needs, especially relationships. We once again practice economics “as if people mattered.” We once again agree that things do not own us and are not even very important. We once again assert that jobs are only jobs, that cars are only organized piles of metal, that houses will one day fall down—but that people are important beyond description. We once again assert that love stands supreme above all other forces, even to the ends of the universe and beyond.
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Under the new understanding of accounting we would not call it progress if we gained in wealth but lost in relationship; we would not call it beneficial if we improved in estate but injured the psyche; and we would not call it profitable if we achieved a promotion but lost spiritual integrity.
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Progress’s biggest failure has been its inability to nurture and protect right relationships.
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None of the tools of progress has helped build the relational foundation our society requires.
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MOST OF OUR PROGRESS:
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1. Physical environment (wealth, technology, health—the material world)
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2. Cognitive environment (knowledge, information, education—the intellectual world)
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MOST OF OUR PAIN:
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3. Social environment (family, friends, neighbors, church—the societal world)
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4. Emotional environment (feelings, attitudes—the psychological world)
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5. Spiritual environment (the eternal and transcendent—God)
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How might we know that the relational environments are where God would have us concentrate? Simply put, these are the same areas Christ spent His time developing and where His teaching is focused.
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when we neglect the most important priorities, our final reward will fittingly be all the unhappiness money can buy.
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“The whole point,” contends British economist E. F. Schumacher, “is to determine what constitutes progress.”4
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What if, instead, we were to begin measuring our progress not by our wealth but by our virtue; not by our education but by our humility; and not by our power but by our meekness?
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love brings us back to Wilberforce: “Above all, measure your progress by your experience of the love of God and its exercise before men.” 7
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problems picked up speed,
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The flow of history is now the flood of history.
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we live in an unprecedented day with unprecedented problems.
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we are playing a different game by different rules on a different stage than any other people in the history of the world.
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where we differ radically from our ancestors and indeed, even from our own recent past, is that suddenly, almost overnight, an entire new wave of social, technological, and economic experience has descended upon us.
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at this particular juncture, an analysis of the past could be more misleading than revealing when it comes to understanding the uniqueness of our day and the dangers of tomorrow.
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problems today are unprecedented is because the mathematics are different.
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exponential now best describes much of historical change.
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Because life has now shifted to exponential terms, the issue of limits has suddenly become an important one.
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because margin is closely related to the issue of limits, most of it has disappeared.
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When you reach the limits of your resources or abilities, you have no margin left. So as history and progress picked up speed, we hit limit after limit. Slowly, margin began to disappear. Then when exponentiality took over the controls, margin vaporized.
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Stress is not the circumstance, it is our response to the circumstance.
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Many of us, often without realizing it, use stress to our advantage. This eustress, or positive stress, energizes us.
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Eustress is what makes us especially creative before a deadline.
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a kind of creative tension.
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When the stress response becomes negative or destructive, it is called distress. This is what most of us mean when we use the word stress.
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An excessive volume of stress is called hyperstress.
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our current stress plague differs dramatically from the experience of our ancestors. Conditions of modern living overstimulate our stress response more than in previous times, and many of the issues are too complex for successful resolution.
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No one in the history of humankind has ever had to live with the number and intensity of stressors we have acting upon us today. They are unprecedented. The human spirit is called upon to withstand rapid changes and pressures never before encountered.
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“Proper physical work, even if strenuous, does not absorb a great deal of the power of attention, but mental work does; so that there is no attention left over for the spiritual things that really matter. It is obviously much easier for a hard-working peasant to keep his mind attuned to the divine than for a strained office worker.”2
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Often our perception of the stressor damages us more than the stressor itself.
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Pediatricians, child psychologists, and developmental experts all believe that our current age is more stressful for children. Social change is too rapid, competition is too stiff, and expectations have risen too high.
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Change—Do not underestimate it. We pay a price for each change we must adapt to.
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Mobility—
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Each move, however, entails an adaptation to the new environment (which is stressful)
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Expectations—Modernity has increased our expectations
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Time pressure—The clock dominates our schedule as never before.
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Work—
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Control—
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Fear—
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Relationships—The intact, supportive relationships we all require for healthy living have dissipated under the tutelage of progress.
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long-term friendships are increasingly rare.
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Competition—
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Frustration, anger—
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These block our ability to use stress in a positive manner and virtually assure destructive results at some level.
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The spontaneous tendency of our culture is to inexorably add detail to our lives:
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We must now deal with more “things per person” than at any other time in history.
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one can comfortably handle only so many details in his or her life.
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It is important to note here that the problem is not in the “details.” The problem is in the “exceeding.” This is called overloading.
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Physical Limits
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Because such physical limits are visible and measurable, humans do not commonly overload in these areas.
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Performance Limits
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are related to physical limits but also introduce the factor of will.
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The endpoint is not as objectively defined, and we often are not quite as willing to accept the fact that there are limits.
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Emotional Limits
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We are concerned not to live beyond our means financially; why do it emotionally?”2
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Mental Limits
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There is a built-in physiological limit beyond which records will rarely be broken. So it is in life.
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Limits are real, and despite what some stoics might think, limits are not even an enemy. Overloading is the enemy.
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Some will respond: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”3
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God did not intend this verse to represent a negation of life-balance.
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It is God the Creator who made limits, and it is the same God who placed them within us for our protection. We exceed them at our peril.
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When our lives are saturated, we should tread carefully.
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Overload
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It is everywhere and it is inescapable.
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Each of us needs to seek his or her own level of involvement and not let the standard be mandated by the often exorbitant expectations of others.
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We must understand that everyone has a different tolerance for overload and a different threshold level when breakdown begins to occur.
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In my experience, the greater problem in our society is not the lack of accountability but the desire to control other people’s lives.
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An important thesis of this book is that we live in an unprecedented age.
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Our modern day is not only qualitatively different from any other but also quantitatively different.
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now it convulses at warp speed.
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“Nothing defines our age more than the furious and relentless increase in the rate of change,”
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Choice overload—
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Commitment overload—
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Debt overload—
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Decision overload—
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Expectation overload—
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Fatigue overload—
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Our weary, withered state is not God’s plan.
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Hurry overload—
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Haste is a modern ailment.
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as the Finnish proverb teaches, God did not create hurry.
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Information overload—
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We are buried by data on a daily basis.
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Media overload—
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Noise overload—
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True quiet is extremely rare.
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People overload—“
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Possession overload—
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Technology overload—
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Traffic overload—
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Work overload—
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why do we do it?
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One reason is lack of understanding.
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some accept overload uncritically because of conscientiousness.
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Nevertheless, chronic overloading is not God’s will. It is okay to draw a line.
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given the ubiquity of overload, we need to choose carefully where our involvement should come.
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We must not allow ourselves to be hammered by distress in the many areas of life that have absolutely no transcendent importance.
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It is not the will of the Father for us to be so battered by the torment of our age. There must be a different way—a way that reserves our strength for higher battles. And indeed there is.
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We must learn the art of setting limits.
PART TWO: THE PRESCRIPTION MARGIN
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Margin is the space between our load and our limits. It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed. It is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating.
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Why, then, when we so desperately need margin in our lives, is it necessary to explain our need for it? Why don’t we understand it by instinct?
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In answering this question, it is helpful to note that some burdens and pains in life are visible while others are not.
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Margin was an unrecognized possession of the peoples of the past.
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The past might have been poor and deprived in many respects, but its people had margin.
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this is a key to understanding why the past often holds such charm.
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Progress devours margin,
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the lifestyle we observe in developing countries today.
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the people have margin. They sit and visit, they watch children play, they walk without hurry, and they sleep full nights.
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In the absence of television, telephones and shopping centers, the inner life gets some long-needed attention….
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To be healthy, we require margin in at least four areas: emotional energy, physical energy, time, and finances.
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Conditions of modern living, however, have drained these margins rather than sustaining them.
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OF THE FOUR margins—emotional energy, physical energy, time, and finances—margin in emotional energy is paramount.
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Emotional overload saps our strength, paralyzes our resolve, and maximizes our vulnerability, leaving the door open for even further margin erosion.
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our contemporary level of emotional stamina is not high.
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Where is emotional resilience hiding these days?
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The answer lies in the fact that we have been ambushed by psychic pressures unparalleled in human history.
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Cultivate Social Supports
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the importance of healthy social supports is irrefutable.
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Pet a Surrogate
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For those caught in a void and left with a dearth of physical closeness, I would suggest considering surrogates—pets.
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Reconcile Relationships
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True reconciliation is one of the most powerful of all human interactions.
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Serve One Another
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Medical studies reveal that service is health enhancing.
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“We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of existence,” observed Horace Mann.
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Rest
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Laugh
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clearly, humor is medicinal.
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Cry
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Create Appropriate Boundaries
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To be able to say no without guilt is to be freed from one of the biggest monsters in our overburdened lives.
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Envision a Better Future
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If we believe in and work for something larger than ourselves—for our families, for the community, for the common good, and for the kingdom—then every expenditure of emotion will have meaning, and every expenditure of emotion will be reimbursable.
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Offer Thanks
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All people have within their grasp much to be thankful for. Gratitude fills. Grumbling drains. The choice is ours.
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Grant Grace
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When we extend grace to our enemies, they receive a shockingly unexpected glimpse of the kingdom.
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Be Rich in Faith
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Dr. Friedrich Flach states, “I believe the most vital ingredient of resilience is faith.”13
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Hold Fast Hope
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Above All, Love
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Love is the only medicine I know of which, when used according to directions, heals completely yet takes one’s life away. It is dangerous; it is uncontrollable; it is “self-expenditure”; and it can never be taken on any terms but its own. Yet as a healer of the emotions, it has no equal. “But the greatest of these is love.”20
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These three factors—poor conditioning, sleep deprivation, and obesity—constitute a physical energy desert where no margin can grow.
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Gone are the old infectious foes, but replacing them are a variety of frustrating enemies variously known as “the new morbidity,”“the diseases of civilization,” and “the diseases of lifestyle.”
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Progress brings technology, affluence, and education, but not the kind of inner discipline necessary to maintain sound physical health.
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we sleep too little, eat too much, and move hardly at all.
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the average American today gets two and one-half hours less sleep per night than 100 years ago.
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“More die in the United States of too much food than of too little.”
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Take Personal Responsibility
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I can inform but not perform that which is needed
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Gain Physical Margin Through Emotional Margin
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A natural, God-ordained mutuality exists between physical and emotional well-being.
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Change Your Habits
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Changing habit disorders often requires changing lifestyles.
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Value of Sleep
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The need for sleep is undeniable and should be regarded as an ally,
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Choose to get enough rest.
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Develop Healthy Sleep Patterns
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Don’t Catastrophize Insomnia
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Don’t Oversleep
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Take a Nap
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Exercise for Sounder Sleep
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Decrease Intake of Fat, Sugars, and Total Calories
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Replace Processed Snacks with Fruit
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Avoid Overeating
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Garden or Buy Direct
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Drink a Lot of Water
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Use Exercise as Both Appetite and Weight Reducer
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McStay at Home
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Exercise for the Heart
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Exercise for the Muscles
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Exercise for Flexibility
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Exercise for the Mind and Spirit
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Bike or Walk
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Choose What Works for You
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Stick with It
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Be Realistic
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our modern view of time is to compress it and milk it for every nanosecond of productivity we can get.
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Ideally, you see, our time should all be God’s time, directed by Him and used for His purposes. It is not right that progress has tyrannized us so.
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No one sits around today trying to figure out how to spend their free time.
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Virtually everyone I know is time desperate.
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The spontaneous flow of progress is to consume more of our time, not less.
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For every hour progress saves by organizing and technologizing our time, it consumes two more hours through the consequences, direct or indirect, of this activity. Because this fact is counterintuitive and subtle, we do not recognize it happening.
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we get to places faster—but we have more places to go.
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“There is more to life,” recognized Ghandi, “than increasing its speed.”
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The marginless lifestyle and its resultant chronic time pressure are particularly devastating to our relationships:
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to self, to family, to others, to God.
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Everyone needs personal time. Those who say they don’t need time for self are probably the ones who need it the most.
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Everyone needs family time.
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Everyone needs sharing time.
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Everyone needs God time.
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Because He is not pushy about His agenda, God is too easy to forget.
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Speed does not yield devotion.
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The clock and the Christ are not close friends.
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it is hardly possible to walk the second mile today without offending one’s pocket calendar.
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steps we can take to restore sanity to our schedules.
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Expect the Unexpected
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A proverb in Ecuador states: “Everything takes longer than it does.”
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increase your margin of error.
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Learn to Say No
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Steven Jobs
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“Focus does not mean saying yes,” explained Jobs, “it means saying no.”15
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Turn Off the Television
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Prune the Activity Branches
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Practice Simplicity and Contentment
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A life of voluntary simplicity and contentment, on the other hand, is opposed to the unnecessary proliferation of material possessions.
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With a simpler wardrobe, our choice of what to wear each morning becomes less time-consuming.
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Everything we own owns us.
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Separate Time from Technology
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The best thing to remember about time-saving technologies is that they don’t.
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Short-Term Flurry Versus Long-Term Vision
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each of us needs a direction and a vision that can inform his or her focus.
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Thank God
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Sabotage Your Fuse Box
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Get Less Done But Do the Right Things
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be on guard against the urgency we see in so much of life’s flow.
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Enjoy Anticipation, Relish the Memories
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With the gift of remembrance, we don’t always have to do a lot. We can do a little and remember it a lot.
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Don’t Rush Wisdom
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wisdom is almost always slow. Wait for clearness. The more important the decision, the longer the time you should take to make it.
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For Type A’s Only: Stand in Line
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Create Buffer Zones
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Plan for Free Time
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Overloaded schedules are not the way to walk In His Steps.
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Be Available
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Being useful to God and other people is a large part of what life is meant to be.
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And yet “usefulness is nine-tenths availability.”
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“We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God,” explained Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions…. It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.”24
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Debt is a noose, and I don’t like having my neck in a noose. I don’t like my future being imprisoned. I don’t like the idea that my children and my children’s children will hold me to blame for their suffering.
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as Proverbs explains, “The borrower is servant to the lender.”4
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surrounded by possessions we do not really own.
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“We can be poor because of the things we have,” suggests William T. Snyder.
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Our love affair with plastic is one of the main reasons we have “no room to wiggle,” that is, no margin.
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Wealth is not a primary objective of the spiritual life.
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Travel in the Right Direction
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In dealing with money, settling the issue of lordship is a mandatory first step.
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If we are to restore margin to our finances, we must put first things first.
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Break Its Back
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How is it possible to break the substantial power money holds over us? Very simple—give it away.
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Counter Culture
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We must break the power of culture.
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The way of the world is not a benign force, but instead a dictator that tells us how much education we should have; what kind of job we should seek; what kind of house, car, and clothes we should buy; who is “beautiful” and who isn’t.
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“Live Within Your Harvest”
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make do with what you have.
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Living within your harvest is possible—it just isn’t popular.
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Contentment and simplicity are invaluable friends in this effort,
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Content yourself with what God sends your way and live a simple life of righteousness.
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Discipline Desires and Redefine Needs
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Decrease Spending
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Increase Income
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Increase Savings
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Make a Budget
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Discard Credit Cards
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Don’t Mortgage the Future
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Resist Impulses
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Share, Lend, Borrow
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Emphasize Usefulness over Fashion
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Fast
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Kingdom First
PART THREE: THE PROGNOSIS HEALTH
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Margin—its presence or absence—influences health.
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Contentment is willing to lend support to margin. So are simplicity, balance, and rest.
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historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., our society is marked by “inextinguishable discontent.”
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Contentment is a cause without a constituency, a virtue without a voice. No one talks about it, let alone recommends it.
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Contentment is not only a good idea, it is our duty. If God recommends something, we ought to do it.
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Our quest is usually not for contentment but for more.
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Contentment, explains J. I. Packer, “is essentially a matter of accepting from God’s hand what He sends because we know that He is good and therefore it is good.”3
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Contentment is the freedom that comes when prosperity or poverty do not matter; to accept what we have and “to want but little,” as Thoreau advised.
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“Give a man everything he wants,” declared Immanuel Kant, “and at that moment, everything will not be everything.”
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The normalization of envy is yet another reason why the achievement of contentment is difficult.
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advertising industry,
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consciously stimulating a chronic state of discontent by continually convincing us that more and better is desirable. Somehow in the process we forgot scriptural admonitions.
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advertisers
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They must manufacture need.
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We are not a hungry society; we are, in reality, overfed. Need must be created, and discontent must be stirred up.
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“Discontent will destroy your peace, rob you of joy, make you miserable, spoil your witness,” warns J. I. Packer.
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1. God comes first and possessions come second. 2. Possessions are to be used, not loved.
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Why hasn’t there been a clear expression of a “theology of enough”?
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“Contentment lies not in what is yours, but in whose you are.”17
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Today, electronic entertainment rides a nonstop conveyer belt directly into the dormant souls of the young. It is not a favorable development. I cannot be optimistic that this trend will miraculously result in a mature sense of contentment in later years.
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God is not indebted to us.
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If life is boring, then it is boring. We work to make it better, but our duty throughout the working is contentment.
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life is tough,
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there is suffering,
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Our duty is contentment.
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DON’T WAIT—WORK
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steps you can take, acts of your will, that point you in the right direction.
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You always have a better chance of discovering the secret if you’re in the vicinity of its hiding place.
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1. Get to work.
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2. Divorce your thinking from society’s relativistic standards.
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Never allow the affairs of others to influence your contentment.
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3. Turn off the ads.
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4. Defer to God’s opinion concerning your family relationships.
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5. Set new standards for contentment using the truth of Scripture.
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6. Develop “counter-habits,” as John Charles Cooper calls them.
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7. Subtract from your needs.
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Make a list of all the things you need and then start crossing things off.
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desire less.”
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8. Accept from God’s hand that which He gives—not resignation, not complacency, but contentment.
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9. If you still do not feel the stirrings of contentment within, argue with yourself and tell yourself the truth.
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simplicity has seldom been more needed than it is today.
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The simple life is:
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Voluntary—
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plain life is far more profitable when it is chosen as an act of the will.
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Free—
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a life of freedom.
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Uncluttered—
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Natural—
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Creative—
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Authentic—
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Focused—
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Margined—
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Disciplined—
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Diligent—
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Healthful—
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And it is not:
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Easy—
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Legalistic—
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Proud—
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Impoverished—
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Ascetic—
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Neurotic—
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Ignorant—
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Escapist—“
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Simplification implies leaving things behind and moving to a new future.”7
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If we choose to ignore fashion and status, we will not gain the admiration of our peers.
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From the outset, we need to decide who it is we are trying to please.
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And why.
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The following are suggestions that will assist in simple living.
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Cultivate contentment, desire less.
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De-accumulate.
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Develop the habit of giving away.
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Simplify your wardrobe—give away excess.
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Learn how to make do with a lower income instead of needing a higher one.
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Slow down.
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Control/restrict/eliminate television watching; surfing the net.
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Cultivate a closeness with God.
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Learn to enjoy solitude.
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Send cards of encouragement and appreciation when others are not expecting it.
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Don’t overwork.
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Elevate reading,
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Exercise. • Bike or walk.
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The simple life sounds all the more attractive when you are in love with the Truth.
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Our rush toward excellence in one quadrant of life must not be permitted to cause destruction in another.
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If you wish to achieve excellence but also to have life balance, beware. Those who advocate excellence at all costs often do not believe in “outside interests” and may not tolerate them.
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God has suspended the laws of mathematics in allowing love to expand infinitely.
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But the time devoted must be balanced, for if we give too much in one area we neglect our duty in another important area and fail God’s requirements for balanced living.
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balance cannot be achieved unless we are willing to say No.
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Following are four additional steps to restoring balance.
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1. Regain control over our own lives.
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If our schedules are ruled by the urgent and tyrannical, we will not have the control necessary for substantive changes.
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2. Place God at the center of all things, and build outward from there.
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focus on—
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loving relationships.
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3. Beware the trap of trying to solve the problem of imbalance by becoming even more imbalanced.
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we cannot give added attention to one area unless we subtract from another area.
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when the rain barrel is full, it is full. We cannot put another drop in unless we first take a drop out. As elementary as this principle is, its application escapes the majority of modern-day people.
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4. Accept the No given us by others.
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Let’s beware of forcing our expectations upon our friends.
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God expects us to perform well in many areas of life. But when He gave us the limits of time and finiteness, at that moment He also built in the necessity of balance. We work hard to please our Master, but we also rest confidently knowing that He understands our condition. What we do we do well—but we do not do it all.
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Those who would maintain that progress brings rest are wrong.
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The first gear is park for the contemplative times. This gear is used for rest and renewal, and to recharge our batteries. This is where we do much of our thinking about values and spirituality, as well as our study and prayer.
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The second gear is low.
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This gear is for relationships, for family and friends. This is the gear we use when talking with someone, and it prevents us from being distracted and nervously moving on to the next activity while still in the middle of a conversation.
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The third gear is drive.
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This is our usual gear for work and play. This gear uses lots of energy, and the faster speed feels good because it is productive.
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The fourth gear is overdrive.
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This gear is reserved for times that require extra effort.
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In our everyday lives, most of us need rest in three areas:
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Physical
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Emotional
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Spiritual
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Such busyness
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comes from a cultural value system that idolizes productivity.
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The slow, contemplative life is largely foreign to our experience.
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if we would rest our emotions, a wise first step would be to seek out quiet.
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Perhaps the greatest root cause for the absence of emotional rest in our society is fractured relationships.
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“If we don’t deal with our unresolved conflicts, they’ll deal with us,” counsels Tim Kimmel.
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If we would avoid the many unexpected pains of our day, we must discipline our expectations, tame our discontent, and mend our relationships.
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“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling”—but the world is shouting and waving its hands. Sometimes, over the din, it is hard to hear His invitation: “Ye who are weary come home.”
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The Sabbath rest we enter out of obedience; the surrendered rest we enter out of our need.
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all the time He was suffering, He knew He was winning. We, too, can suffer and win.
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Jesus calls us to His rest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort.
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“Don’t worry, be happy,” will not rescue us. I prefer Corrie ten Boom’s “Don’t wrestle, just nestle.”
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mostly our lives are filled with passivity.
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At this juncture, however, allowing history to just “happen to us” is unforgivably foolish.
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What should we do about all this pain?
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thank God for it.
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repent.
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The kind of repentance where you conduct business with God;
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let’s do some surgery.
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let’s cooperate with God.
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For the short term, we need worry only about today.
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our responsibility is to do what is right today.
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of course we must plan intelligently and prayerfully.
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But we can only get there one day at a time, and today is the day to do what is right.
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another hopeful secret about God’s plan. He wants us to reclaim society, but not necessarily as the first order of business.
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He has, of course, already given us lots of instructions. But if we were to boil them all out, one principle would rise to the top: the priority of relationship.
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when life is over and we receive our report card, it will have only one category—relationship. There will be three lines: • How did we relate to God? • How did we relate to ourselves? • How did we relate to others?
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the greatest commandment: “‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’” However, He did not stop there: “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”4 In so answering, Christ laid out for us the greatest imperative of eternity: to love God, our neighbor, and our self. This commandment must be the first guideline for all of life’s decisions and actions. Nothing is to come before it.
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Love the Lord your God.
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Love yourself.
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Love your neighbor.
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Created incapable of meeting all our own needs, God gave us others, in relationship, to help.
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God has shown us the road to health, the path to blessing—it is the way of relationship.
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Spending and receiving love is the best part of kingdom work.
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Somehow, we just can’t wrap our minds around this idea of love. We can’t nail it down and say, “There, I’ve got you.” Yes, love is strange. It is weak yet tough, vulnerable yet strong. It chooses to lose but can never be beaten.
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God’s love is commonly undervalued and always underestimated.
