So I am sitting in my dorm room with the communal typewriter shared by several of us roommates with my typing paper inserted and pencil and whiteout all at the ready . . . (Can you guess what year this is?) and it is time, always time, to fuss with my margins.  “How many footnotes will I end up with on this page?”  “How much indented material will there be on this page?”  “Oh, no, I miscalculated!  Time for a fresh piece of typing paper!”  “Time to re-type the page.” 

Only if you are of a certain age does any of this make sense.  Faint pencil marks are your only guides to this intricate process.  Double space this, single space that.  Look up “extricate” to see where I can divide and hyphenate . . . 

That was then.  Now, all that is a piece of cake.  Thanks, Microsoft.  Thanks, Apple.   

Now the margins practically do themselves when you are composing. 

But some other margins have become a whole lot hairier.  Life margins.  Margins of time that is extra, white as that 1” border all around the page.  Time to think, unaided.  Time without a cellular device in hand.  Time to plan, to dream, to reflect, to breathe. 

Are your “life” margins correct? 

I am finishing a week of work as I write this where I kept asking myself and those around me, “Where has today disappeared to?”  I feel margin-less right now, to tell you the truth.  The stuff of schedules just keeps rolling my way, and I am missing those blank moments that allow my brain and heart and spirit to calibrate.  

Next week will be better, I say.  Or at least different.  That treasured day off is shining at the end of my week like light at the end of a tunnel. 

Life margins are those places where God often waits for you and me.  The “blank spaces” of the schedule with nothing in them, no topic sentence, no footnote, no header to tromp all over them.  God is waiting for us in the margins. 

There he has quiet and peace.  He has direction going forward and forgiveness looking back.  The reminder waits there in the blank spaces to “be still and know . . .” 

Of course, God is present in the busy-ness, all the meetings and appointments and scheduling surprises.  But I will meet him best when I regularly plan to wait on Him in the next blank space I have outlined in my day, my week.  He waits in those margins for me! 

People God has placed in my life’s path also wait in my margins.  Will I see them?  Will I listen to their story?  Will I be present with them there?  It happens best when I plan for it, even if my plans shift around. 

That hospital visit makes more sense if I breathe a moment or two before I get out of the car.  The worship leading flows from both head and heart when I stop to pray first.  The moment of reconnection with family at the end of a day is richer for me taking a couple of beats first with not-so-much in them. 

Margins matter.  The blank spaces in our day, our week, and beyond.  They matter to you, to your God, to the people in your daily life-path.   Imagine how He can fill those blank spots on your schedule with hope, with peace, and with His presence. 

God bless your margin-making and margin-keeping! 

(By the way, it was 1981.) 

God’s peace to you! 

Jeff Marquardt

La Plata, MD

Jeff is Senior Pastor at Grace Lutheran Church and School, where he loves interacting with all of God’s children at both.  He is also very pleased to be a part of the SED coaching network.