day 926: Billing By The Hour

"For you know the generous act of our lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich."

Anyone who has ever had to engage someone who is in professional services knows what it means to be billed by the hour. There is always that moment when you look at the hourly rate and then gasp.  What usually happens next is you take your own salary and divide it by 2080 (the number of work hours in a year - if 40 hours a week) and make the comparison.  That's when we either see reality or we deny the proposal because we can't make sense of the hourly rate proposed.  I'm personally terrible at setting an hourly rate because I can't charge what the market might say my time is worth because it feels like "too much to ask'.  But, that's just me.  A good exercise inside an organization is to think what would we be doing with our time and people if we thought about every hour being spent as "billable".  No one wants to do this because it is cumbersome but it would be eye-opening, if not eye-popping when completed.  For sure we would be more cognizant of the amount of time we sit in meetings, or worse yet, sit around waiting for a meeting to start.  The billable hour assessment for a week or so can be healthy for an organization.

Paul writes to us of generosity and the encouragement for all of us to be generous in our undertakings and time with other people.  He also tells us that there was one who never considered His time to be billable.  How fortunate we are that God doesn't bill for services rendered as if He did, we could never afford what He has and will do for us.  One way that we can respond to what God has and does do for us is to be generous with our time, talent and treasure to others.  Today, consider that the way we allot what we have to others as our reflection of Christ.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 8:9