In Minnesota, as the old joke goes, the year breaks down into two seasons: winter and road construction.

When my husband and I lived in Florida for three years, we discovered that road construction is a never-ending season. Every Sunday on our way to church we traversed a seven-mile stretch of pavement that was continuously ripped up and dotted with orange cones. Season in and season out, the construction crews never seemed to finish the job.

We contrasted their apparent slowness with the Land of 10,000 Lakes, where crews will labor all week long in October to complete road maintenance. So are Minnesotans innately harder workers than Floridians? No, they simply embrace their natural limitations.

Winter provides Minnesotans with deadlines and incentives. No one knows for sure when the first snowstorm will strike and the ground freeze up. Work must be completed literally while the sun still shines.

This contrast challenges my perspective on eternity. Too often I live like a Florida-road-construction Christian—not realizing the urgency of helping to complete the job of the Great Commission. I have all day, all month, all year to communicate the gospel with a neighbor, friend or relative. What's the rush?

And the relaxed-deadline principle relates to my relationships. It's not too tragic to leave one in disrepair for awhile when a blizzard's not looming. Or to take time with my young kids for granted when their departure seems many exits down the road.

In reality, I want to be more gripped by life's brevity. I am too easily lulled into thinking that our mission to spread the gospel and care for our neighbors is not that urgent. Hell can't really be that bad. Or else I would act and live and love others like eternity really did hang on it.

I need the Lord to help me take closer to heart Paul's words to the Ephesians: "Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil" (5:15,16, New International Version).

Fair weather dupes us into believing the lie of unending opportunity. Let's instead rip a page out of Minnesota's road-construction playbook and allow tomorrow's uncertainty to expand our laboring and loving today.

This was not the plan.

Expected in Indiana for a friend's bachelorette party, I was stuck at the airport—a day after my original departure. First it was weather, now a sick flight attendant.

Chaos defined the terminal. Kids cried. An energetic Yorkie puppy needed constant walks. One passenger angrily shouted at airline employees, others looked exasperated, and I felt the same. My nerves were shot.

I can't take much more, Lord, I thought.

I was tired, cranky and impatient. My attitude was ugly. Then out of nowhere, Galatians 5:22-23 came to mind: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."

As God's Word flooded my mind, my attitude began to change. I can either reflect God's peace or impatiently react like other travelers, I thought. Internally, my nerves calmed and my impatient thoughts quieted. I gradually felt myself relax.

I can't change this situation, so I should make the best of it.

Eventually, I made it with an hour to spare before the party, and my spirit much lighter than it had been waiting at the airport.

All is calm as I enjoy a post-rainstorm Saturday inside my house. I look out at our backyard, a jungle of overgrown greens. A pine shoots skyward, almost conjoined with an exotic-looking deciduous tree I can't identify. Bright green thorny vines cover the trunks of both and totally hide the ground.

Suddenly, two huge tree limbs come crashing down. This is odd: it's not raining and there's no wind...just blue skies and sudden commotion.

When I closely examine the accident scene, I realize what happened. The thorny vines had choked the deciduous tree and it desperately reached out for sunlight and breathing room, growing wider than it should have. The earlier heavy rains had increased the weight of the branches, and one large limb couldn't hold up any longer, breaking off and hitting another, larger branch with the same result.

A realization hits me. It's like how Jesus talked about God as a gardener in John 15:1,2: "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit."

Sometimes I'm like the tree, surrounded by worries and worldliness. Instead of pruning these choking vines in my life, I often try to work around them, overextending myself as I move further away from God. Sure, I can juggle the world and the Word for a while. But if I do that, eventually it all comes crashing down.