Schedules

Schedule. What is it about HOME and SCHEDULE that do not seem to go together? The same doctors that tell you to feed your baby whenever, and let your children sleep whenever want to tell you those things during a set appointment time. Schools and work places dictate arrival and departure times but HOME can’t set any boundaries. People fill agenda books with all sorts of professional appointments and project lists, but HOME can’t find a time for all its inhabitants to meet together and projects are planned on the whenever-we-get-to-it-basis.

The first place children should learn about schedules is in the home, not school. The most important appointments a business man keeps should be his home appointments. The schedules that ought get the most coordinated, thoughtful attention between a husband and wife ought be the in- home schedules, not the coordinating sports-music-school-business trip-chauffeuring schedules. The most successful schedules an office manager arranges ought be his/her home schedules.

Maybe part of the problem is that we tend to think of HOME as the place we are ENTITLED to relaxation, no pressures, nobody “bossing” us around, the place WE can DO WHAT WE WANT. HOME is where we can hide from pressures we don’t want to face. HOME is where we are KING and others serve US.

That is not HOME. That may be a retreat for a day, a vacation for a week, a break from normal. It might be a wild fantasy, but that is not HOME. Entitlement is not part of HOME, any part of HOME, for any gender or any age level.

HOME is the Life Training Center and benefits from operating like a school and a business in a professional sense, like a church in the encouraging and edifying sense, and like God’s Home in the family relationship sense.

Think about model schools for a minute. Time to eat. Time for recess. Classroom Helpers. Transferring skill learning to other areas. No child abuse and no child idolization. Majority of time spent in focused attention to cycles of challenging tasks. Home should lead in those patterns.

Think about excellent businesses for a minute. Time to eat. Vacation Times. Peers working in collaboration on major projects, communicating regularly and expecting some accountability. No sexual harassment. Good benefits. Schedule flexibility. Respect for the whole life of workers. The best example for business should be the home patterns.

Think about churches for a minute. Encouragement and Edification to do what is right and uphold truth, not to pander, pamper or enable wrong behavior. Accurate, exposition of Scripture. Big, challenging biblical visions for what individuals, families, communities and the world can do for Christ by being Christ-like. Home should be very church-like if two or three believers live there and quite a lighthouse if only one believer is there.

Schedule is a good way to uncover wrong thinking about home. Schedule can help develop right thinking and doing in the home. Schedule can make relaxing an appropriate release rather than devouring selfishness. Schedule can make working hard have proper limits as well as a diligent ethic. Schedule can allow for life breathing and life rigor.

Home is the first and best place to learn about life schedules. If the ideas you have about HOME and SCHEDULES is substandard, the best time to change such thinking and responses is now. Whoever else is with you in your home now–or whoever will join your home in the future–will reap the benefits of the changed outlook.