A lot of people are on overload and headed for a crash. Consider these statistics:

• People now sleep two and a half fewer hours each night than people did a hundred years ago. You're sleeping less than your grandparents did.
• The average workweek is longer now than it was in the 1960s.
• The average office worker has 36 hours of work piled up on his or her desk. It takes us three hours a week just to sort through it and find what we need.
• We spend eight months of our lives opening junk mail, two years of our lives playing phone tag with people who are busy or who are not answering, five years waiting for people who are trying to do too much and are late for meetings.

We're a piled-on, stretched-to-the limit society. Pastors especially are chronically rushed, chronically late, chronically exhausted. Many of us feel like Job did when he said, "I have no peace! I have no quiet! I have no rest! And trouble keeps coming" (Job 3:26 GW).

Overload comes when we have too much activity in our lives, too much change, too many choices, too much work, too much debt, too much media exposure. We're stressed by information overload. We're stressed by accessibility overload—we're connected all the time.

Simply put, we're stressed by the pace of life.

Is there a solution? Yes. The solution is to put some margin into your life. Margin is breathing room. It's keeping a little reserve that you're not using up. It's not going from one meeting to the next, to the next, with no space in between.

Margin is the space between your load and your limit. Hopefully your load is not heavier than your limits. But the truth is that most of us are far more overloaded than we can handle, and there is no margin for error in our lives.

Dr. Richard Swenson, MD says this:

The conditions of modern day living devour margin. If you're homeless we direct you to a shelter. If you're penniless we offer you food stamps. If you're breathless we connect you to oxygen. But if you're marginless we give you one more thing to do. Marginless is being 30 minutes late to the doctor's office because you were 20 minutes late getting out of the hairdresser because you were 10 minutes late dropping the children off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from a gas station and you forgot your purse. That's marginless.

Margin, on the other hand, is having breath at the top of the staircase, money at the end of the month, and sanity left over at the end of adolescence. Margin is grandma taking the baby for the afternoon. Margin is having a friend help carry the burden. Marginless is not having time to finish the book you're reading on stress. Margin is having the time to read it twice. Marginless is our culture. Margin is counter-culture, having some space in your life and schedule. Marginless is the disease of our decade and margin is the cure.

Here are four immediate benefits you will enjoy when you begin to build margin into your life:

Peace of Mind
When you're not hurrying and worrying all the time, you have time to think. Time to relax. Time to enjoy life. We had a bird come into the building one evening before service. He started singing, and it was just like we'd been given an invitation: "Just relax. Everybody except those sitting directly under the bird, relax."

Better Health
Unrelenting stress harms our bodies. We all know that, yet we let it continue day after day after day. Many times the only time we get margin in our lives is when the heart attack almost happens or does happen or the blood pressure skyrockets.

Why do we wait until our health plummets before we make this decision? Why not realize that we need to build some margin into our lives now? The truth is, your body needs downtime in order to heal. Race cars make pit stops occasionally in order to get repaired. You can't fix anything going 200 miles an hour. Yet we try to be repaired while we're still racing through life. Margin builds in time for better health.

Stronger Relationships
Lack of margin is one big reason for the collapse of the American family today. When we don't make relationships a priority and make time for each other, our relationships suffer. The truth is relationships take time, and margin provides the time to sit and talk, to listen and enjoy one another, and to provide the comfort we each need.

Usefulness in Ministry
When you're overloaded by activity, you can only think of yourself. You're in survival mode, just trying to make it through another day. But being available to God for his use makes all the difference in this world.

When God taps you on the shoulder and says, "I'd like you to do this for me," and you have no margin in your life, your first response isnt joy. Your first response is, "Oh, no! Another thing to do! Sorry, God—I'd like to do that, but I'm just too busy."

We end up resenting the great opportunities God brings into our lives. But when you have margin, you're available for God to use.

You don't have to live on overload. You don't have to live in survival mode. Begin today to build a buffer around your schedule. Then enjoy the benefits of margin—and see what God does next!

This article is used by permission from
Rick Warren's Ministry ToolBox by Rick Warren.
More information available at www.pastors.com.