From an unknown source comes this story…A farmer hired a man to work for him. He told him his first task would be to paint the barn and said it should take him about three days to complete. But the hired man was finished in one day. The farmer set him to cutting wood, telling him it would require about 4 days. The hired man finished in a day and a half, to the farmer’s amazement. The next task was to sort out a large pile of potatoes. He was to arrange them into three piles: seed potatoes, food for the hogs, and potatoes that were good enough to sell. The farmer said it was a small job and shouldn’t take long at all. At the end of the day the farmer came back and found the hired man had barely started. “What’s the matter here?” the farmer asked. “I can work hard, but I can’t make decisions!” replied the hired man. How true does that story ring in our own lives?

Completing a task is, all too often, not near as difficult as choosing or prioritizing the tasks to be completed. In a very real sense, that’s what can make the season of Lent what it is – a season about priorities. What are the things or actions that need to move up on the priority list? What needs to go down or even be taken from the list altogether? The call to the Christian life is very much a call to prioritizing. Shall Christ be Lord of All, Lord of Some, or just a buddy I need when I get in a bind? In what basket will you put your ‘potatoes’?