the Glocal Trekker Blog

I was getting on the plane to return home from speaking somewhere and I lucked out. I got on the upgrade list and got to upgrade. I was getting my seat ready--my laptop was ready--books and files in the seat in front of me--I’d work like wild for the next two hours. The guy behind me was talking on his cell phone. It was as if he wanted the whole plane to hear him, or he was trying to talk to Helen Keller! You could hear the conversation. "Make sure they’re there to pick me up, have so and so get me so we can talk while heading to the meeting . . . have the projector set up. . ." What caught my ear, though, was his one phrase, "This will be an exhausting day—traveling--setting-up, for just 10 minutes."

Isn’t it true, that most of what we do doesn’t take nearly as much time as getting ready for it? We study, prepare, write, organize, etc., and generally it comes down to 10 minutes of something--selling an idea, moving people to action, or organizing something. Big things happen in 10 minutes, or they don’t happen.

God, help me this day to really do well in those ten minutes that I plan. Help me recognize the ten minutes You put in front of me for which I have not planned: When You have me meet someone for some purpose in their life, or my life, that I can’t see at the moment--when someone is hurting and You place them in front of me--when someone is searching and they bump into me--when someone is singing, and it slows me to listen.

Ten minutes--ten thousand years--all the same in Your eyes, God.