One Wednesday night...

The clock nears the mark of six, but there is little sign of relief from work tonight. While waiting for votes, I make a feeble attempt at cleaning up the mess of the day, starting with my computer desktop and its flurry of open documents. At least half of them are open, unnamed working documents – “Document4,” “Document 12,” “Document40” – all remnants of crisis projects. Talking points for an interview that didn’t happen; save for the future, just in case. Barely-started talkers for next week’s tele-town hall binder. Memo on the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment – at least that got finished today. Open Internet windows from search terms like “cost of 1 percent COLA increase” and “income eligibility verification system.”

At least my physical desk is somewhat clean, a sweet spot of sanity incarnated in a single to-do list (there are usually several). An article I set aside to read, a few stray business cards. The letter I need to talk to the boss about.

I was going to go to Bible study tonight; I’ve been trying to get back into the habit of going to church midweek. My own times in the Word have been so sweet lately that I’ve very much looked forward to being sharpened by others’ insight on Wednesdays.

But tonight, the majority’s decision to try and get a continuing resolution through promises to keep me here well past Bible study time. I grumble because my nights are my time, because I wanted to go from church to my apartment and try the newest soda bread recipe I’ve discovered to work out the day’s angst in the kitchen.

As I close out the documents, mostly worthless now, I think of friends who get to invest every day in their spouse, their children, relationships that matter, and the old doubt comes back: how much of your day mattered?

I’m tempted to go down this familiar path, down the route of bitterness. Why can’t I have a set of clearly defined relationships in which to invest instead of the amorphous set of circles – college friends, work friends, church friends, long-distance friends, childhood friends – that I’m surrounded by? That’s a full time job in itself, I sigh, and I don’t do it very well on top of everything else.

But then –

Then I remember a teenager walking down the Mall in front of the Capitol building, who felt more at home there than in any mall to which her peers were more accustomed. I hear the echo of the wordless call – it was almost more a promise – that she would return to this place, when it would then be her mission field. She thought she knew what that meant at the time. In some ways she understood, but in others…

And then there was the little chart she made when she started applying for scholarships so she could attend that school just outside of Washington. It featured a thermometer – like they use for telethon fundraising – and a section of Malachi 3:10 emblazoned at the top: “‘Try Me now in this,’ says the LORD of hosts, ‘if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it!’” A promise boldly claimed, without a second thought, without doubt.

As I recall the past, the present comes into clearer focus. It occurs to me that servants are about their Master’s will, not their own; that their time is His, not ever ultimately theirs, whether spent at a desk, in an open field, in a church, in a kitchen. Packer’s meditation on Ecclesiastes comes to mind, where he defined wisdom (in part) as working hard at whatever life calls you to do and enjoy your work as you do it – to leave to God its issues and let Him measure its ultimate worth.

So the end of this remembering is that I am not to be the measurer of mattering – a re-revelation that is at once humbling and alleviating.

Ah, there go the bells again…