There is a part of our yard that I’ve been avoiding for a couple of weeks. Instead, I’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on the main part of our yard where the kids play. I’ve seen the dozens of little yellow flowers off to the edge, and knew that I needed to go out there soon and pull those out…but I’ve been putting it off. I thought that I had plenty of time, especially because the flowers make it pretty easy to tell where the bur is. I wasn’t counting on the storms though.
A few days ago, we had some storms come through. Fortunately we missed the bad stuff, but we did get a couple of inches of rain out of them (which is a good thing, because we needed it.) The downside of this is that the storms knocked the flowers off of the bur that was there, and they’ve grown significantly. Instead of lots of tiny plants with few seed pods and bright yellow flowers that make it easy to locate them, we now have lots of much larger plants, some with lots of seed pods, and no yellow flowers, so they blend into the now-overgrown grass.
Even though I’ll undoubtedly spend a lot of time scouring the yard looking for those seed pods, I’ll inevitably miss a number of them. Next year, they’ll sprout, and I’ll be back in the same battle again. My procrastination has cost me much. Not just today, but in the future as well.
It may seem harmless to put things off until later, even when we know that we should do them now. Sometimes it’s safe to do that, like not getting a haircut. Other times it’s riskier, like putting off changing the oil in the car. But some things should not be put off. Calling the fire department when smoke is coming out of your attic. Going to the ER when you have chest pain and shortness of breath. Confessing the sin in our lives and getting ourselves right with God.
I think that many of us find that last one the easiest to put off. We know that there is sin in our lives that we need to deal with, but we put it off. We feel like we’ve got plenty of time to deal with it. Plus sometimes the sin we know we need to deal with can seem fun, pleasurable, exciting. We’ll deal with it when we’re older. When we’ve lived our lives and had our fun, then we’ll surrender our hearts and let God clean us up.
And then the unexpected happens, and we don’t get around to the part of fixing our relationship with God before we stand before Him.
How much will our procrastination cost us? Many times, the answer is significantly more than we realize.