Robert Lowery

NOTE: Dr. Bob wrote this post last Wednesday, March 4, 2009. — Ed.

I couldn’t sleep last night so I arose around 3:30 A.M., cleaned up, and arrived at my office around 4:15 to begin work. I reviewed my “To Do” list for the week, made some adjustments, and then made up my “To Do” list for the day. And I was stopped dead in my tracks as I recalled what I was thinking about when I feel asleep last night—the twelve Boy Scout laws! A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Those core values were drilled into me for nearly six years and I remember them to this day. I have never had to look them up in the manual.

A Scout is . . . A Christian is . . . I thought this morning: Far too many times I am obsessed with drawing up my “To Do” list that I forget the most important one, my “To Be” list.

I still have a piece of paper my daughter Rachel wrote up when she was in the second or third grade. The paper was influenced by something she saw me do regularly. She drew up her “To do” list for a particular day. It reads: Get up . . . Roll up sleeping bag (For a while she did not want to mess up her bed because she had to make it so she found it easier to use her sleeping bag!) . . . Eat breakfast . . . Brush teeth . . . Play . . . And that is how the list ended. What a precious memory, for the most part.

Be holy . . . Be salt . . . Be light . . . Be wise . . . Be ____________.

We are a nation obsessed with doing rather than being and we fail to realize being precedes doing.

A few minutes ago, Michael Gowin—webmaster par excellence—informed me that I needed to write up a few entries. Specifically, he asked me if I could get one to him by the end of the day because he was leaving for some vacation. I added his request to my “To Do” list for the day. Now I can check it off.

What does your “To Be” list look like? Or do you even have one?

Related posts:

1. My “To Be” List