A
man was cleaning out his desk and found an old ticket stub for shoes he had
left in a shoe repair shop five years earlier. He went to the shop and said, “I
found this ticket for some shoes I brought in five years ago. I don’t suppose
you still have my shoes, do you?”
The shoe repairman said, “I’ll go in the back room and check.” He returned saying, “Yes, we still have them. They’ll be ready next Friday.”
Procrastination means putting something off because we don’t want to do it right now. Sometimes it’s due to our lack of discipline. At other times it’s due to indecisiveness. Or maybe we think the problem will go away if we ignore it.
When Pharoah refused to set the Hebrew people free from slavery in Egypt, God sent a plague of frogs to make his life miserable. Frogs covered the land and many hopped into Pharoah’s house, into his bedroom, and into his bed (Ex. 8:3).
Pharaoh pleaded with Moses to ask the Lord to remove all the frogs from the land and “then I will let the people go.” Moses told Pharaoh, “You make the choice rather than me. When should I ask on behalf of you that the frogs be taken away from your houses?” Pharoah said, “Tomorrow” (Ex. 8:8-10).
Why would he want to spend one more miserable night with frogs hopping all over him when he could get rid of them now? Perhaps he thought the frogs would go away on their own during the night. But the real reason for the overnight delay was struggling with giving up all that free labor. Putting off the decision only make the problem worse.
Delaying what we need to do usually makes the situation worse than if we would have done it immediately. The “things-to-do” list keeps growing and becomes so overwhelming that we never want to deal with it. The grass grows taller. The credit card balance gets larger. The needed car repairs keep adding up.
Proverbs 20:4 says, “A lazy farmer doesn’t plow when he should, so at harvest time he has no crop.” Don’t put off what needs to be done. Tackle each dreaded duty one task at a time. Don’t let the frogs sleep in your bed for another night. www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com www.makinglifecount.net
