Margin

mar·gin [mahr-jin] –noun
1. an amount allowed or available beyond what is actually necessary: to allow a margin for error.

Margin has become a word often spoken around me the past few weeks. Books are not written to the edge of the page, is this the way life should be lived? Push it to the edge!!

To the edge with my schedule, where there is no margin of time to give away when someone is in need of it. To the edge living between right and wrong, where the slightest slip and the lack of margin can cause disaster. To the edge in my finances, where every dollar (even that portion given away) is committed leaving no margin to react to those God places in my path today. To the edge in filling my mind and space with a continuous something, not anticipating that most of what God teaches comes in the margins.

How I need margin. The wide kind of margin you find in a good book or Bible. Good publishers do not fear the use of paper. Allows for places to pause and take note of what is going on. There is so little room to stop when running along the edge and the first place to cut becomes the margin.

Lord, provide me patience and humbleness to remove my definition of what is absolutely necessary and give you the margin to define what it means to go “beyond the necessary” in my life.