The Applause of Heaven - Max Lucado [6]
No. His is a joy which consequences cannot quench. His is a peace which circumstances cannot steal.
There is a delicious gladness that comes from God. A holy joy. A sacred delight.
And it is within your reach. You are one decision away from joy.
Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down.
CHAPTER 2
His SUMMIT
If you have time to read this chapter, you probably don't need to.
If you are reading slowly in order to have something to occupy your time ... if your reading hour is leisurely sandwiched between a long stroll and a good nap ... if your list of things to do today was done an hour after you got up ... then you might want to skip over to the next chapter. You probably have mastered the message of the next few pages.
If, however, you are reading in your car with one eye on the stoplight ... or in the airport with one ear listening for your flight ... or in the baby's room with one hand rocking the crib ... or in bed late at night, knowing you have to get up early in the morning ... then read on, friend. This chapter is for you.
You are in a hurry. America is in a hurry. Time has skyrocketed in value. The value of any commodity depends on its scarcity. And time that once was abundant now is going to the highest bidder.
A man in Florida bills his ophthalmologist ninety dollars for keeping him waiting one hour.
A woman in California hires someone to do her shopping for her-out of a catalog.
Twenty bucks will pay someone to pick up your cleaning.
Fifteen hundred bucks will buy a fax machine ... for your car.
Greeting cards can be purchased to express to your children things you want to say, but don't have time to: "Have a great day at school" or "I wish I were there to tuck you in."
America-the country of shortcuts and fast lanes. (We're the only nation on earth with a mountain called "Rushmore.")
"Time," according to pollster Louis Harris, "may have become the most precious commodity in the land."
Do we really have less time? Or is it just our imagination?
In 1965 a testimony before a Senate subcommittee claimed the future looked bright for free time in America. By 1985, predicted the report, Americans would be working twenty-two hours a week and would be able to retire at age thirty-eight.
The reason? The computer age would usher in a gleaming array of advances that would do our work for us while stabilizing our economy.
Take the household, they cited. Microwaves, quickfix foods, and food processors will pave the way into the carefree future. And the office? Well, you know that old stencil machine? It'll be replaced by a copier. And the files? Computers are the files of the future. And that electric typewriter? Don't get too attached to it; a computer will do its work too.
And now, years later, we have everything the report promised. The computers are byting, the VCRs are recording, the fax machines are faxing. Yet the clocks are still ticking, and people are still running. The truth is, the average amount of leisure time has shrunk 37 percent since 1973. The average work week has increased from forty-one to forty-seven hours. (And, for many of you, forty-seven hours would be a calm week.) I
Why didn't the forecast come true? What did the committee overlook? They misjudged the appetite of the consumer. As the individualism of the sixties led to the materialism of the eighties, the free time gained for us by technology didn't make us relax; it made us run. Gadgets provided more time ... more time meant more potential money ... more potential money meant more time needed ... and round and round it went. Lives grew louder as demands became greater. And as demands became greater, lives grew emptier.
"I've got so many irons in the fire, I can't keep any of them hot," complained one young father.
Can you relate?
When I was ten years old, my mother enrolled me in piano lessons. Now, many youngsters excel at the keyboard. Not me. Spending thirty minutes every afternoon tethered to a piano bench was a torture just one level away from swallowing broken glass. The metronome