I was going to write this blog yesterday but I decided to leave it until today. Now that today has arrived, I'm kind of wishing I'd done it yesterday but now I'm thinking I might leave it until later on tonight. Anyway now that I'm started, I might as well admit that I'm a bit of a procrastinator, but more about that later. To procrastinate means to defer or delay doing something but my dictionary adds a little bit of spice to the whole meaning of the word because it adds that such action is often borne out of habitual laziness or carelessness and suggest that when we procrastinate, we needlessly defer something and often put it off until it's too late. There might be something in this because the French phrase for procrastinate is 'remettre à plus tard' and if my schoolboy French serves me well, I think the word 'tard' had something to do with late. I think I need to explore that a bit more, but hey, some other time. Thankfully, it's not just a British or Irish thing to procrastinate for almost every popular language in the world has its own word for this condition but that's for another day.
So, are you a procrastinator? Maybe you need time to think about it and then give me an answer later! And what do people procrastinate about? Surely even the most serious procrastinator doesn't allow their problem to infuse every area of their lives. You see, sometimes it's actually good to put off doing something. Like the man said, 'don't put off until tomorrow, what you can do the day after!' And I guess he has a point for how often, just giving yourself that little bit more time over something, affords the opportunity to make a better informed decision. How often have you wanted to say, do or write something and because you procrastinated, it turned out all for the better, because nothing was said, done or written.
But I think the real point about putting something off until another time is often down to not wanting to face responsibilities until you have to. When letters come into out house, very often if they're bills, I'm very quick to set them aside until a later date, often not even opening them, I suppose operating the principle that 'no news is good news.' The same thing often happens when I'm due to ring someone, I tend to not get around to it or when I need to book something on the internet, it takes me ages to make a decision. One night, a long time ago, I was going to text an answer to a question for a competition and even though I had everything typed into the mobile, I kept putting off pressing the 'send' button until the competition deadline passed. Which is just as well, for somebody else won it, anyway! But for every procrastinator there comes a time when you can put things off no longer and they have to be dealt with and, funnily enough, they're not that difficult after all.
But I can't put this off any longer for I would be failing if I didn't tell you how much God loves you and how much He wants to be part of your life. And in a sense He has put off the day when His Son returns to earth until many others come to repent and believe in the salvation He offers. The Psalmist says 'I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands.' For the procrastinator, there is no sense of urgency, no immediate concern, no need to rectify things right now, but Paul writes, 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.' Indeed, fro the procrastinator, there is no today for their life is filled with tomorrows. But tomorrow eventually becomes today and some day that day will be too late. Put off any other decision you need to make in life but never procrastinate with God's call.
