Oh Really Mop & Bucket and My Time That toilet is awfully filthy, the student remarked in passing to the

Christian teachers college principal and then continued on his way to have lunch with fellow students. After lunch he walked through the same corridor, past the same toilet. He noticed some activity in the toilet area. He sneaked a peek through the half open door and, to his astonishment, saw the principal masterfully working a mop and bucket, cleaning that awfully filthy toilet! It was a very pensive student who continued on his way to his next lecture. When I heard about this episode, I was reminded of the saying that car maker Henry Ford had behind his desk and which would stare every visitor to his office right in the face. The plague stated: Dont find fault, find a solution! It was his view point that too many people find it easy to gripe about what is wrong, but leave it to others to sweat on the remedy. He knew about the twenty-eighty rule which says that eighty percent of the work is done by twenty percent of the people and he took issue with it. He was a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, a breakaway movement from the Church of England. This church was very active in the Social Gospel Movement, applying Biblical ethics to social problems such as poverty, inequality, liquor, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, child labour, weak labour unions, poor schools, and the danger of war. Above all they opposed rampant individualism and called for a socially aware religion. Henry lived a life that was keenly governed by actively putting his own hand to the plough and encouraging others to do the same, as he was committed to the urging of the Apostle Paul in Romans 12:1 to be a living sacrifice in Gods service. He realised that he was called to exhibit the goodness of God to this world by being an imitator of Jesus in all of life and in all relationships (1 Corinthians 11:1). It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities, said Lord Josiah Charles Stamp, a Baptist believer in 19th century England. He too was a firm believer in putting in effort and time to be a healing influence in a broken world. And he was in tune with the famous German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who said, Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean. What has all this fascinating detail to do with our Christian living here and now? The issue is one of almost timeless relevance actually. These men of old were formed in their thinking by Biblical principles as they lived their lives in church and society. This is the point of commonality between them then and us now or should be. To our shame we must say that the twenty-eighty rule works to a large extent in the church too; to our shame we must say that we consider ourselves too often owners of our time, suppressing the notion that time is a gift from God to be used to His glory (not negating the use of some of it for entertainment and such like, but stressing the issue of priority). In a society which promotes career building, hedonism and pleasure seeking, sacrificial giving is hard to practise, especially when cleaning other peoples metaphorical toilets. Yet, in imitating Christ, we are asked to look in the mirror seriously and assess whether we are really such who are concerned for the greater welfare of the Body of Christ to which we belong. Are we floating along in church life as it is being organised by others around us, or are we actually positive contributors to the organic functioning of the

local body? 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 has the Apostle Paul exclaim that we are not our own, we have been bought with a price so as to glorify God in the body (individually and covenantally). Some years ago I had a conversation with a fellow church member. We got to talk about the time we spend on regular devotions and involvement in church activities. He struggled on both counts, found it hard to be regularly committed. I asked him how he spent much of his time apart from work and family commitment. Well, he said, this is where the moment of embarrassment sets in, because it dawned on me as we went through our chat, that I actually happily push myself to do a course for career advancement at the moment, spending some four hours per day on that, but have trouble setting an average of 30 minutes daily aside for church related work. It kind of reminds of what some one said about spending money. He said how strange it is that a fifty dollar bill looks much smaller at the petrol pump than in the church collection bag. I guess for me that has been the case in terms of minutes rather than dollars. There is much to do out there in society; it is titillating, appealing to the senses, lovely or profitable - to get involved in. There is also much to do in Gods Kingdom, locally and beyond the local borders. There are two spheres of involvement pulling at you, as it were. Both need your participation. Todays question to you: How do they balance in the scales of your energy and time management? Dr Herm JG Zandman 10/09/2012