How Much is Enough?

A frequent training question--especially for runners newer to a particular distance. Throughout his marathon training, my friend Jeff was wondering if he was training enough--long enough, fast enough, often enough. He was able to find some resources from others who had run many marathons who could assure him that his training was adequate. Then came the run and he found out, in his own experience, that his training had been enough. As I found this time around, there can be a fine line between enough and too much. More is not necessarily better.

The greatest small group in the world (GSGW) has been in a study of the church's response to poverty. I assume that the families in the GSGW are probably involved in significant ways in giving time and money to alleviate poverty by supporting different organizations such as Children's HopeChest, Compassion, World Vision, and World Relief. But one of our questions is "How much is enough?" Could we give more? Could we do more? Absolutely! But should we? That is a question that the GSGW is wrestling with.

We realize that if we use time, energy, and money in one place, then we cannot use the time, energy, and money for other things. Granted, some things are not worthy of our time, energy, and money, but there are many good, just, and noble causes. How do we choose where to invest ourselves?

For some reason I feel a certain urgency to get this right. Maybe it is looking at the reality that I am probably on the verge of moving into the last third of my life. I am reasonably content with the first two-thirds, but it is really important to me to get the last third right. (Sometimes I feel that if I can just not make the same mistakes any more--find some new ones--then I will be OK.) My biggest question right now is "In light of eternity, what is the best investment of my time, energy, and money?

A week or so ago a friend mentioned that he is needing to consider carefully what races he will run. He feels like he only has a few races left, then he will need to stop. I feel that way a bit myself right now. (Might be true and might just be time still recovering from injury.) Assuming that I have finite running resources, where do I want to invest those miles? Should I do something new? Or run some familiar races one more time that I like? Are there particular people I want to run with one more time?

Finite resources and almost infinite opportunities to use/invest those resources. How to use them best, that is the question.

Pressing On!
-Ken