Priority # 6 - My Ministry - Tick! Tock! I'm on the Clock

Time and I have never been good friends. It's like an untrained dog. It won't stay where I put it and if you turn your back on it, once you turn around again it has turned your life upside down. In front of my keyboard I have a little chart that lists how much money I could make as a medical transcriptionist. The variables are typing speed versus hours worked per week. On the bottom right under typing speed of 80 wpm and 40 hours per week, the figure quoted is $39,520. There are 2080 work hours in a year so that comes to about $19 per hour. Since I'm paid by the line, that averages out to a little more than 200 lines per hour. There are days that I CAN reach 200 lines per hour and there are other days that I'm lucky to be moving at half that speed.

I have been doing MUCH better than I used to. I credit a couple of things. First in learning to keep the Sabbath. One day I was reading something about Sabbath keeping and it said, "Not only has the Lord commanded us to rest on the seventh day, but He has commanded us to WORK on the six other days." Could I say with all honesty that I was working when I was supposed to be working on those other 6 days? How could I keep the sabbath if I hadn't kept the "work"?

It has been about a year since we have been keeping the sabbath consistently. What started off rocky has turned into something -- well, less rocky. I can now get off work on Friday afternoon, look back on my work week, and say, "It is good," and enjoy my weekend with family and friends. No more am I sitting at the computer until all hours of the night pretending to work because I'm already depressed because I have squandered my time this pay period and there is no way I can possibly make it up.

Secondly, I have also learned a LOT about productivity from reading blogs. One of my favorite is called Working Naked, for people who work from home like me (but choose not to be naked).

Yesterday's, blog was called 9 Ways to Increase your Productivity at Home. It has been INCREDIBLY helpful and I reward myself for my productivity by spending time with my favorite people on earth. :-)

"Six days you shall do your work, but the seventh day you shall rest and keep Sabbath, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your bondwoman, and the alien, may be refreshed." Exodus 23:12 AMP

"Blessed, happy, and fortunate is the man who does this, and the son of man who lays hold of it and binds himself fast to it, who keeps sacred the Sabbath so as not to profane it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil." Isaiah 56:2 AMP

"If you turn away your foot from [traveling unduly on] the Sabbath, from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a [spiritual] delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and honor Him and it, not going your own way or seeking or finding your own pleasure or speaking with your own [idle] words, then will you delight yourself in the Lord, and I will make you to ride on the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage [promised for you] of Jacob your father; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it." Isaiah 58:13-14 AMP

"And hallow (separate and keep holy) My Sabbaths, and they shall be a sign between Me and you, that you may know, understand, and realize that I am the Lord your God." Ezekiel 20:20 AMP

Blessings!