I recently finished reading the book When Work & Family Collide by Andy Stanley.  The subtitle to this book is “keeping your job from cheating your family.”  Every one of us only has 24 hours in each day, however, there are times when we don’t make wise choices in how we use that time we have been given.  Life has a way of staying busy with work, family, hobbies, ministry obligations and everything else.  When life remains busy we tend to start seeing overlap with our work and family.  As work and family start to collide more often we see what the author calls “cheating on our family”.   You don’t have to be a corporate executive to have work and family collide, you could be a house wife who puts the chores, cleaning, laundry, and other household duties at a higher priority then your family.

Keeping work and family in balance can be a difficult task, but if we consistently shortchange our time with our family we’ll begin to see the side effects.  Even if the reason we are working so hard is to provide a good life for our family if time is not invested regularly in the each family member you’ll start to notice a negative ripple effect.  Andy Stanley used a variety of great examples from his own life as well as others to illustrate how work and family collide.  For example, if one parent is traveling a lot there will be noticeable consequences on the family over time OR if you have a parent that spends almost all his weekends “at home” biking or hanging out with his friends instead of taking time to enjoy fun activities with his wife and kids eventually the stress will begin to show.

The author points out that it is important that we become aware of work or activities that are taking too much time away from those we love.  He used the illustration of Daniel.  Although Daniel had some tough times in his life he still insisted on honoring God by not eating the foods sacrificed to idols and openly worshiping God.  Even though from our perspective he may appear to be out of his mind for disobeying the king he had faith that God would take care of him even if he went against the wishes of those in authority.  To bring it back to our day you may have a boss that requires you to work long hours in order to maintain your job.  If you feel the Holy Spirit revealing that you need to spend more time with your family and less at work you may have to make a tough choice.  When you look at it in black and white it appears like an easy solution, however, we may live in fear of losing our jobs, a good paycheck, or something else.

God doesn’t reveal His will for our consideration.  He reveals it for our participation.

Your Creator doesn’t define your life by your career achievements or the neatness of your pantry. 

There’s not enough time to get it all done.  We’re going to say no somewhere, either verbally or through neglect.

Stay-at-home Moms and Dads can just as easily cheat those around them.  Whether working outside the home or inside the home, there’s a strong tendency to become preoccupied with tasks – agendas and projects and “to do” lists. 

Work and family will collide, it is how you react and balance it so that each has its place in your life.  We are called to work and be good stewards of the gifts we have been given, however, we are also called to nurture and care for our families. I was hoping for a few more biblical examples of those standing up for their faith and family in the book but otherwise it was a good read.  Is your life in balance?  If not you may want to check out this book just to get you started, it’s a quick read but a great reminder to keep our focus on the priorities in our lives.

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