Daylight Savings Time used to be my biggest challenge of welcoming spring. Was it spring back, fall forward? Spring ahead, fall back? Gravity always confused me.
That changed when I became a tax payer. After a long winter of resting my brain, filling out tax forms provided me with an activity that was 1,040 times more challenging than reassembling 500-piece optical illusion puzzles--blindfolded. Why do tax laws have to be knottier than a ball of yarn in the paws of a crazed cat?
I've decided the IRS forms and booklets were devised by second-career astrophysicists, assisted by Ph.D.s in Egyptian hieroglyphics whose doctoral dissertations were typed in Sanskrit. Their technical assistants formerly mapped the Roman catacombs.
Thus as the April 15 tax deadline looms, an epidemic of procrastinitis profundus sweeps the country.
One symptom is imagination. We dream of miracles the night of April 15, like discovering every receipt for tax computation magically stacked into tidy, tallied piles that will self-inscribe the appropriate blanks on the IRS form. Then we'll only need to sign for that tax refund to cover two weeks on a tropical beach (or pay off the credit card). We'll whistle a merry tune that night as we drop off the return at the post office or hit the magic "send" button on the computer.
If that's really true, then there really is a Loch Ness Monster.
Instead, in the midst of Schedule A, I find myself pushing the calculator aside, rubbing my forehead, and taking a big breath. I feel like quoting a guy named Felix, who said, "That's enough for now!"
In case you wondered, that's from the Bible: Acts 24:25. And he wasn't referring to taxes (enough came in to fund his extravagant lifestyle as a Roman procurator and his womanizing). Instead, he'd just heard what he didn't want to hear from a political prisoner named Paul, namely "righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come." Paul had reminded the self-indulgent ruler that God had a better plan for Felix's life. But the prospect of bowing to the King of Kings scared Felix. He never changed.
Have you ever said, "That's enough for now," when presented with spiritual challenges? Have you faced where you truly stand in regard to righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come?
If you haven't yet accepted Christ as your Savior, some day there will be no more chances. Do it now.
If you are a Christian, but afflicted by procrastinitis profundus in your spiritual growth, it's time to turn away from apathy.
Spring forward to a fresh start with God. Fall back on His promises to help you along the way.
Adapted from chapter 9 of "Spiritual Spandex for the Outstretched Soul" (Shaw, 2000)
