Dr Richard Swenson, in his book Margin, says that the answer to the problem of overload in life is to give yourself margin. Overload is being thirty minutes late to the doctor’s office because you were twenty minutes late getting out of the hairdressers because you were ten minutes late dropping the children off at school. Margin, on the other hand, is having breath left at the top of the stairs, money left at the end of the month, and sanity left at the end of adolescence.
But our capacity to organize margin in our busy lives has to come from within us. The ancient wisdom of the Bible reminds us that it is in quietness and confidence that we find our strength, and that quietness comes from the inner peace of those whose minds are focused on and are kept by the God of Peace.