In a hilarious part of his routine a few years ago, British comedian Michael McIntyre delved into every male’s trusty treasure trove – the man drawer.
If you’re a man, you possess a man drawer. If you’re a woman (this post is relevant to you too), you know a man who has one.
It’s the sole domestic storage area that every man needs – or thinks he needs. As McIntyre paints it so vividly, it contains batteries of indeterminate life, instructions for appliances we don’t own any more and coins of foreign currencies made obsolete by the euro.
If our approach to planning involves only a catch-all to-do list, this is a bit like rummaging randomly through the man drawer.
Without some kind of structure, our actions are triggered by whatever items grab our attention. “Yay, it’s that Sony Walkman cassette player you can’t buy in the shops anymore. I think I’ll see if those old cassettes from my student days are still in the loft.”
Branching out for fruitfulness
Virtually all time management approaches I’m aware of recognise the need to compartmentalise the areas of our lives. These are the logical extension to the man drawer – more like a chest of drawers.
The key areas may be role-based – leader, parent, financial steward – or settings based – company, athletics club, church. They will most likely be a combination of both.
In the parable of the vine (John 15), Jesus describes believers as branches of himself, the true vine. In wine-growing, a branch that grows from the main vine is called a cordon or leader. These leading branches bear other smaller branches from which the grape clusters grow.
I like to think of the sub-branches as a picture of the areas of our lives in which we are called to bear fruit. These could be workplace, ministry, family, finances, spiritual growth, wellbeing and relationships. They all form part of our lives – the ‘leaders’ – and are also connected to the same, true rootstock himself.
Taking a regular overview of our lives involves looking to the vine from which we grow, knowing that he supports, informs and empowers us in each branch of life.
We can use this picture as a way of reviewing our ‘sub-branches’, knowing they are all part of the overall picture of our lives. And we can remind ourselves that they are all connected to, fed and nourished by the true vine himself as we stay in step with his purposes.
True Vine Time 