What's in your pack?

I heard a pretty neat analogy today in chapel and thought I'd post it here. One of the pastors from Ada Bible spoke today on Mark 1 -- a busy day in the life of Jesus -- and it really caught my attention. So often I get frustrated by all the "things" I'm doing. I seem to recall posting something of this nature about a month back but I don't feel like looking for it, so forgive me if this is redundant. There are so many opportunities in this life to do good things but the problem is a lot of the time I feel like I have too many of the good things going on to justify doing them all.

So here goes the analogy----my week is like a backpack.

It is only so big and can hold only so much. If I were to pack for a really long hike, the smart thing to do would be to pack light to make the load easier to carry as I go along 'cause by day 3 or 4 I'm going to be getting really, really tired. The neat thing is, if I were to go hiking through the Smokey Mountains, there's this place at the "gate" to the Smokeys called Neal's Bend (tried to find it online and I couldn't, so maybe I'm spelling it wrong) with an outdoor gear-type store. At this store, for free, the workers will unload your pack before you head out on the trail, tell you what you need to take along, and then mail home what you don't need. They're experts in hiking and they know essentials when they see them.

The idea behind the analogy is that you can only "stuff" your week so full with x-amount of things before it gets to be too "heavy" for you to carry. You'll either wear yourself out, fall down the hill 'cause you're top-heavy, or worse, give up. The point is, fill your week with the good things God has called you to do and learn to say no to the others. Look at the motivation behind why you're always saying "yes" to everything --- is it really because that's a "good work" God's appointed for you, or are you concerned that saying "no" might make someone not like you. Are you doing the things that God wants you to do, or are you shirking your duties in that respect by jumping at every other "good" opportunity that comes your way?

Back to the Scriptures, in John 17 Jesus prays to the Father and tells Him that He's finished the work God set out for Him to do. Our challenge today was, "Can YOU say that too?" At the end of the week when we look back over everything we've done, can we honestly say that we did the work GOD had for us? Or did we occupy ourselves with the many, many "good things" that end up not being necessarily so good when one stops to consider that God might've wanted other things from us?

I'm still working through this and I know I've left a few "holes" in my reasoning above, but that's 'cause I'm typing on the fly! :o)