What is alluring in the concept of procrastination? Why does it seem so much better to do something tomorrow instead of today? The “grass is greener on the other side” concept makes more sense to me. So why is it so easy to procrastinate?
At least with the “grass is greener” concept, you are actively doing something. You’re feeling jealous. And even if what you’re accomplishing is negative, at least you’re accomplishing something. But procrastinating? What does procrastinating accomplish? Wasting time?
In my case, procrastination usually rears its head when I’m too busy and I have too much work to do. I have too many projects to know which one is the one I should work on, so if I give into procrastination I don’t work on any of them. I have too many novels or short stories to write, so I don’t write any of them. Recently, procrastination has been really easy for me.
But the problem with procrastination is that even though you stop working, time keeps moving. Time isn’t on our side, fellow procrastinators, and one more day that passes with us doing nothing is one less day we have to get our work done. And when our deadline hits, we’ll be out of luck and there will be no more time to waste.
In that case, you have two choices — you can either scramble around a few hours before and do a crappy job. Or you can give up.
Now, I usually end up scrambling around and producing a half-decent piece of work which is why I can procrastinate so long . . . because only I know how much time I really wasted in its production (the guilt from things like this really cured me of the vast amount of my procrastination issues before I got out of college).
But some deadlines you can’t extend. And some responsibilities have a definite time limit. And there is no scrambling around to get it done at the last minute.
Today’s verse is Isaiah 55:6.
6 Seek the Lord while you can find him.
Call on him now while he is near.
When it comes to our relationship with God, we should never procrastinate, but it’s just as easy to do it as it is with anything else. Maybe it’s because humans are wired to think that tomorrow will come like it always has.
But no one is guaranteed tomorrow. Shoot, we’re not even guaranteed today. I could get in my car to drive to work in ten minutes and hit a loose cow in the road and be killed. Someone driving in front of me could lose something off the back of their truck, like they did in June 2008, and I could go flying off an overpass and die.
The point is, no one knows what today holds for us. And no one can be 100 percent certain that we will even see tomorrow. So why are we so confident that we have enough time to procrastinate? How can we procrastinate when we don’t even know what our deadline is?
The deal is this, I personally believe that as long as we’re alive on earth, if you seek the Lord, you will find Him. I don’t think God ever gives up on people. I don’t think there is ever someone who is too far away to come back. There are no examples in Scripture of turning anyone away who is genuinely seeking.
The problem is, how much time do you have left to seek? Because if your life ends and you’re not right with God, you won’t be able to find Him anymore no matter how hard you look.
This even applies to those of us who already believe. We should still seek God in our lives after we have decided to believe in Christ. But even as believers, we have a limited amount of time on Earth and if we seek only the things of the world, what good will we accomplish for God while we’re here? And then, even when we get to heaven and even though God will be near to us, we will no longer have opportunity to serve Him where it matters.
I don’t know how much time I have. But whatever time I have, I need to make the most of by being focused on the things that matter and seeking God with everything I have. Because even though procrastination is easy, it’s never the right thing to do. And nothing worth achieving was ever easy.
Always Peachy 