More Than a To-Do List

Our lives cannot be reduced to a to-do list. We are more than that.

We are like the arc of raising a child — or growing an oak tree — or casking a great whiskey. None of these activities are efficient. None of them can be rushed. Nor should they be.

Sitting in the moment feels like waste when life is reduced to “doing.”There's nothing to check off. Nothing to show for it.

It reminds me of Mary pouring out a full year's wages worth of nard — extravagant, inexplicable, inefficient. The disciples were scandalized. What was accomplished?

And yet, Jesus called it beautiful.

That kind of living resists measurement. You can't quite nail down its production value. But something happens in those spaces. Something true.

Perhaps what happens is the best kind of good — the kind that doesn't fit on any kind of list.