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Is it just us or does it seem like there just isn’t enough time to get everything done? Our days are limited to 24 Hours (± a few seconds). Get on a fast plane flying west and you might capture a few hours on a one-time basis. That’s probably not going to be enough, is it? “First Things First,” Stephen Covey tells us in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. “Begin with the end in mind,” he says. Perfect—more pressure from the gurus.

Speaking of gurus, where is God in all this? We’re all for the afterlife but what are we supposed to do in the meantime? In the middle of too much, too fast, how are we supposed to pay attention to God?

Alright, deep breath: Let’s take a moment to assess where we are.

First, draw a pie shape on a sheet of paper (download our printable worksheet) and draw in the way you spend your week in the form of a pie chart.

Your chart will look different, of course but, just for grins, let’s say it might look something like this…

My 168-Hour Week… Depending on the extent to which your chart represents your life, there are several other names you could give it: My Ideal Week…My Living Hell…My Choices…168 Reasons I’m Unhappy…The Good Life…

Or, if you think of yourself as a Christian, as many friends of InsideWork do, you might call your chart—forgive us if this sounds more religious than you feel; we’re just making a point—if you think of yourself, more or less comfortably, in Christian terms, you could title your chart The Christian Life—or at least My Christian Life.

You’ll have your own ideas about what this title could mean. We think it’s significant because chances are your Christian Life pie chart is probably not too different from your neighbors’ at work—a couple of hours at church here, a few minutes at prayer there, a committee meeting, a small group perhaps, and back to business like everyone else.

For the most part, one ordinary working person invests her 168 hours much like the next ordinary working person. So, for most of us, hours invested “going to church” or “spending time with God,” don’t exhibit a life that looks obviously different from neighbors and fellow workers who spend those hours eating breakfast with friends and reading the Sunday Times.

Yet most of the people who call themselves Christians say God makes a difference in their lives (you may have said those words yourself). If that difference isn’t necessarily obvious in the way they spend their waking hours, then, what is the difference in a Christian’s life?

We think it’s something like this: Let’s assume for the moment that you were the Christian in question and that you didn’t merely hide beneath the cloak of calling yourself a Christian (all the while spending your time on unspeakable things). If you were to lay your pie chart over on its side, so it looked more like an actual pie with a crust and filling and less like a chart, maybe the biggest difference between your pie and the person’s in the next office over would not be so much the ingredients—the work, leisure, sleep and so on—as the fact that, for reasons having very little to do with you, somehow you would find those ingredients infused with the presence of God. Sure, a sprinkle of prayer and a dollop of Bible Study might distinguish what you talk about at the water cooler, but the bigger difference would be if somehow your pie were filled up with the very essence of The Baker.

At the risk of hitting you in the face with your own pie, we have come to believe that God is the filling. God is also the crust. God is the pie. Christians write email, attend meetings, and pay bills like anybody else. They just do all those things as if God were present in each detail; as if those things mattered to God; as if God were invested in how the work gets done every bit as much as the work that gets done.

“Teach us to number our days aright,” Moses wrote; “that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). The Apostle Paul chimed in centuries later to the Colossian Christians: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Colossians 3:23-24).

It’s possible you can’t really celebrate the good news that God is at home in the everydayness of life and work because you fell into despair just trying to complete the pie chart. You would not be alone if under your breath you muttered, “168 Hours is not enough.” To which we can only say, “Sorry, we checked with the Home Office and that’s all there is.”

“The key is not in spending time but using it.” Arthur Bryan, Chairman, Wedgwood & Sons Ltd. In First Things First

So, if you get the same 168 Hours everyone else gets, the question is, “How do you get the most from those hours?” Because, really, is a difference that makes no difference really a difference?