Once we see prayer as the foundation of our lives, and therefore worthy of careful and conscientious planning, we can return to the world of work with renewed strength and renewed vision.
The second practice of stewardship of time is to plan our lives around prayer.
Well, prayer has a way of refining our desires and our priorities.
When we enter into it with all of our minds and hearts, the Lord responds by showing us ourselves, our desires, our hopes, and our plans in the light of his loving plan.
This refining pertains primarily to supernatural realities, but it can also touch upon the natural realities of work, professional goals, and career.
When this happens, we see more clearly the really important aspects of our work— what propels us further along the path of excellence, and what pushes the needle towards accomplishing our professional goals.
Of course, this can happen outside of prayer as well.
We can, and should, spend time mentally sorting the wheat from the chaff, identifying priorities, and figuring out what is most important in the work we do.
Being good stewards of our time means being diligent, even relentless, in spending less time on the things that matter less, and more time on the things that matter more.
This does not mean shirking the smaller responsibilities and tasks that fall on our shoulders.
These we must continue to carry lovingly and diligently.
But it does mean trying to cull the less important things from our lives so that we can fill our lives instead with the more important things.
This can be difficult.
Some tasks are inevitable, like taking a phone call; some tasks are comfortable or enjoyable, like dealing with email, which can feel very satisfying in the moment but unfulfilling in the long run.
Leaving some of these behind, or rearranging them for greater efficiency, frees us up for the things that matter much more: real creativity and progress at work, real investment in friendships, and real growth and contribution in the area of culture.
In short, the same sort of proactive, planning approach we take to distributing our time on a day-to-day basis should make us reflect on the larger picture of how we spend our time, so that we consistently make minor adjustments over the course of weeks, months, and years.
Stewardship of time isn’t merely a skill that we learn, and then we’ve got it.
It’s a habit, a kind of practical wisdom that we refine over the years, improving our opportunities to work, to love others, and to rest.
In prayer today, ask the Lord to illuminate your mind to see where his personal call is leading you and what the really important things are in your life, professionally, personally, and otherwise.
Ask his forgiveness for being at times inattentive to his will and then ask him for the grace to keep his noble plans at the forefront of your mind.
