Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8 NIV
Do you know the address for stress? Do you know where stress makes itself at home? You are right. It lives anywhere margin is not found. Peace, contentment, even trust tend to disappear and stress takes over.
Relationships with God and people are at risk when every minute, dollar, and emotional reserve is always already allotted and spent. When there is no intentional space provided in our schedules, finances, emotions, or spiritual life, our relationships die, sometimes by slow withering, other times because the intense emotions aroused get out of control. Without margin, even the best relationships can crash and burn.
- When we live at maximum capacity, we shoot from the hip, and someone always gets injured.
- When we live at maximum capacity, we react emotionally rather than responding wisely.
- When we live at maximum capacity, we do not notice how others are responding until the damage is done.
- When we live at maximum capacity, we maximize things that are not worth our energy and minimize the investments that could change everything.
- When we live at maximum capacity, the people in our lives we love the most get the scraps of our time, money, and emotional reserves.
- When we live at maximum capacity, we are exhausted and overloaded. Patience and kindness are in short supply.
I could go on. But I do not need to do it. You have experienced this, haven’t you? Either it has happened TO you, or you have risked or even completely ruined a relationship, not because you or the other person was a bad person. But there were no margins. We do it with God too. We have allowed life to control us instead of us controlling and managing our lives, and He gets our occasional scraps too.
Margin helps us respond instead of react. Margin enables promises to be made and kept. Margin empowers us to give our best energy to those who truly deserve it. Margin is a gift to self, allowing us to pray, think, and seek God’s wisdom before a relational misstep. Margin gives us emotional and physical capacity to serve and love others well. Loving each other deeply does not occur in scrambled moments. Loving deeply requires time, space, and margin.
- Jesus, the problems in my relationship with You and the people I love almost always arise from overwhelm and overreach. I need margin, and only I can make that happen. Help me choose well and build my relationships wisely.