Replacing the urgent with the important …

Some “old sayings” become old because they have an enduring nugget of truth in them.

Take, for example, the old saying, “Can’t see the forest for the trees.”

It’s a statement about not really seeing the obvious in our lives even though it’s right in front of us.

That’s how many people live regarding what is important. What really is important is obvious and right in front of them, yet they allow for other “urgent” issues to cause them to deviate their attention, time, and resources away from what is important.

When we allow what seems to be “urgent” to consistently detour us from the truly important, we’re creating regrets we’ll have to settle later on. This is especially true when it comes to our relationships. This truth was illustrated rather poignantly in 2006 when Peggy Noonan, famed conservative political correspondent and columnist, wrote a moving piece for the Wall Street Journal titled “The Sounds That Still Echo From 9/11: Five years later, final phone calls from people killed in the attacks reverberate with strength and grace.” In the article, Noonan recounts the contents of some of the voicemails and messages left by 9/11 victims for loved ones in their final moments of life. Below are some of those messages …

• • Flight 93 flight attendant Ceecee Lyles, 33 years old, in an answering-machine message to her husband, “Please tell my children that I love them very much. I’m sorry, baby. I wish I could see your face again.”

• • Fire Capt. Walter Hynes on his wife’s voicemail just before rolling out of Ladder Company 13 heading toward the Towers, “Honey, it’s real bad,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ll make it out. I want to tell you that I love you and I love the kids.”

• • Moises Rivas, 29, a chef at Windows on the World, the renowned restaurant at the top of the North Tower, reached his stepdaughter Linda Barragan, who relayed his message to his wife, “… he said not to worry, he is OK. He said, Mami, he loves you no matter what happens. He loves you. That’s it.”

• • International trade consultant Melissa Harrington Hughes, 31, also stuck in one of the towers, called her father Bob Harrington at home in Massachusetts at 8:55 am, nine after the first plane struck the North Tower. He tried to calm her and told her he loved her. “She said, ‘I love you too, Dad’ and she said, ‘You have to do me a favor. You have to call Sean and tell him where I am and tell him that I love him.'” Twelve minutes later, at 9:07 am, Melissa was able to make a second call to her newlywed husband Sean, who was asleep in San Francisco, and leave a message. “Sean, it’s me,” she said in her message. “I just wanted to let you know I love you and I’m stuck in this building in New York. There’s a lot of smoke and I just wanted to let you know that I [will] love you always.”

• • As American Airlines Flight 77 was winging toward the Pentagon political commentator Barbara Olson called her husband, U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson. She discretely tried to share information with him about how the situation was unfolding. “It’s going to come out OK,” she said. “I love you.”

• • On United Flight 93, passenger Mark Bingham called his mother and got her voicemail. “I want you to know I love you very much, and I’m calling you from the plane. We’ve been taken over. There are three men who say they’ve got a bomb.”

• • Peter Hanson, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 175 called his father. “I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building,” he said. “Don’t worry, Dad — if it happens, it will be very fast.”

• • Also on United Flight 175 Brian Sweeney called his wife, got the answering machine, and told her they’d been hijacked. “Hopefully I’ll talk to you again, but if not, have a good life. I know I’ll see you again some day.”

• • There was Tom Burnett’s famous call from United Flight 93. “We’re all going to die, but three of us are going to do something,” he told his wife, Deena. “I love you, honey.”

• • And on that same flight another passenger was ready “to do something.” Todd Beamer spent several minutes on the phone with a cellular customer service representative, Lisa Jefferson. Together they prayed, “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, even as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.” Then turning his attention back to his fellow passengers he said, “Are you ready? Let’s roll.”

These are just a sampling of the hundreds of calls and messages that poured out from the chaos that morning. Of the messages, Noonan observes:

“Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, ‘I never liked you,’ or, ‘You hurt my feelings.’ No one negotiated past grievances or said, ‘Vote for Smith.’ Amazingly — or not — there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying ‘I hate them.’ No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor.

“These were people saying, essentially, in spite of my imminent death, my thoughts are on you, and on love. I asked a psychiatrist the other day for his thoughts, and he said the people on the planes and in the towers were ‘accepting the inevitable’ and taking care of ‘unfinished business.’ At death’s door people pass on a responsibility — ‘Tell Billy I never stopped loving him and forgave him long ago.’ ‘Take care of Mom.’ ‘Pray for me, Father. Pray for me, I haven’t been very good.’ They address what needs doing.”

How about you? If all you had left were a few moments and a cell phone, what would your concerns boil down to? Who would you call? What would you say? How would crisis edit your life?

It was a tragic moment when we see Jesus Christ hanging from a cross, offering Himself as a sacrifice for our sins. In the final moments of His human journey, He sees Mary, along with John (one of His disciples), and like those 9/11 victims, He shows concern for others …

“Standing near the cross were Jesus’ mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary (the wife of Clopas), and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her, ‘Dear woman, here is your son.’ And he said to this disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from then on this disciple took her into his home,” John 19:25-27.

Unlike us, Jesus lived his earthly experience keeping what was important the focus of His life rather than being detoured by what others claimed to be urgent. In our lives, many sources hound us that various things are urgent and demand our attention, our time, our resources. It is true that we sometimes have to make sacrifices to deal with legitimately urgent matters, but when such issues become so consistent in our lives that they cause us to stray from real focus — real investment in — what truly is important, then we need to have the wisdom and self-discipline to make the decision to give priority to the important rather than the urgent.

Jesus told the story of a man who claimed to have an urgent matter to take care of before he could follow Him. His response to him reveals what is really important …

Then one of the teachers of religious law said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” But Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head.” Another of his disciples said, “Lord, first let me return home and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me now. Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead.” – Matthew 8:19-22

Anything that would deter or detour our immediate and complete surrender to, and following of, Jesus Christ is not urgent or most important.

Have you allowed issues or others to become more important than your followership of Christ? Have you allowed yourself to be drawn away from following Christ to deal with urgent matters? If so, Jesus says to you, “Follow me now!” To do that, you’ll have to replace the urgent with the important.

What about other relationships in your life? Has attention to your marriage or your children suffered because of other urgent matters drawing you away?

How do you determine what is important, what is urgent, and what priority is given to what? In addition to building your values from the Bible, and seeking direction and discernment from the Lord through prayer, let me suggest you take a look at the chart to the right. It’s a simple tool to help you categorize the place people and issues should be given in your life.

First, and of most importance, are those things that are BOTH important and urgent. These people and things should go to the top of our priority for our time, attention, and resources. Next would be those people and things that are not urgent, but they are important. Following that are those things that are urgent but not important, and finally, you have whatever is neither urgent nor important. Using this chart, how do you fare in keeping that which is really important as top priorities in your life?

When will you choose to NOT build regrets from placing the urgent before the important? When will you replace the urgent with what is most important in life?

Scotty