Every day, I will bless You and praise Your name forever and ever.
Psalm 145:2 ESV
Margins. The blank edges surrounding the printed words on a page call out my name.
I hear questions such as “What do you think of what you just read? What does this remind you of? Are you in agreement? How does this make you feel? Do you disagree, and if so, why? Does this support or relate to something else you’ve read?”
These questions demand answers. And so, I write in the margins. I fill the margins surrounding the printed words with scrawled responses to the questions raised by the printed words.
This margin-writing habit long ago forced my husband to ban me from reading books taken from his library. Our separate bookshelves hold many duplicates – one clean (his) and one with page margins filled with hand-written notes (mine).
As I pondered margin-writing, my thoughts eventually moved to the idea of margin-living.
Life, like the pages of a book, should have margins. Margins of time, both large and small, that are not packed full of plans, scheduled events, or activities. Margins allow for times of refreshment, relaxation, and reflection. These times permit us to carve out moments to think about and communicate with our Heavenly Father.
Margin times are times of intention:
• To meditate on God and His Word,
• To remind yourself of what He has done in the past,
• To remember His promises for today and the future, and
• To talk with God and listen in silence for Him to speak.
If you are anything like me, you probably find it difficult to the point of impossible to build margins into your life. I have spent most of my life trying to fill every waking moment productively. For decades, I habitually got up earlier and stayed up later to fit more and more “productive activities” into my day. The result of that strategy is ever-shrinking margins that eventually turn into non-existent margins.
The productive activities scheduled into my busy days included church-related services and personal Bible-reading times. All good and God-pleasing things when done with the right heart and in the right spirit. But when I treated these things as chores on my to-do list, they were no longer God-pleasing or spiritually edifying. Living with chronically crammed schedules that leave no time to focus or meditate on God, His Word, and my relationship with Him is ineffective and dangerous margin-living.
While thinking on this topic, I read the following quote by Oswald Chambers,
Beware of any work for God which enables you to evade concentration on Him.
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
Chambers warns that any work for God that does not allow for or encourage moments of prayer, meditation, and intentional concentration on God will get in the way of our spiritual growth.
I will go one step further to say that when we eliminate the spirit-filling moments of margin-living, we make ourselves vulnerable and open to attack. Satan, the world, and the flesh know that we are most susceptible to lies, disappointments, fears, spiritual weaknesses, and seductions of all sorts when we are living lives without margins.
Like margins on a page that corral the words and keep them from falling off the edge of the paper, the margins in our lives create godly buffers that protect us from falling over the edge into an abyss of overwhelming stress, pressures, trials, problems, grief, and hopelessness.
Our season of life and commitment to godly living determines how we build margins into our lives. As a young mom, I was thrilled to find a few quiet minutes each day to focus on God. As an executive with a harried travel schedule, I learned to find moments of margin while sitting in noisy, busy airports, crowded airplanes, and lonely hotel rooms.
Now, as a writer, most days, I am blessed with extended margins that allow me to thrive and delight in the present and, perhaps, make up for those days of living in narrow margins.
Whatever your season of life, schedule, obligations, and responsibilities, if you are committed and intentional, you can find moments daily to create margins that will allow you to refresh, relax, and reflect on your walk with God.
I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all Your work and meditate on Your mighty deeds. Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God?
Psalm 77:11-13 ESV
As for me, I will happily continue to fill the margins of my books with my thoughts and insights. And I will prioritize, protect, and treasure living moments in the margin.
How about you?
Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Ephesians 5:15-16 ESV