If all you do is-win-win-win-no-matter-what, then maybe your wife and children should be singing along.

And I am the first culprit here.

I can’t believe how many times I have scheduled evening appointments when I should be home. I can tell how many times, my attempts to listen to my wife well have been interrupted by the notification vibration from the rectangular gadget in my pocket.

You don’t want to know how many times I have treated this place like a hotel rather than a home.

Or how many times I have lingered when I needed to call the plumber or help take out the trash.

Intoxicated with the food aroma on the dinner table, I have rushed through prayer with my daughter watching.

Unable to truly gather this little family towards thanksgiving before the Lord, I’ve been more eager to rest than to engage the humans behind these walls.

I’ve walked out this door almost every morning caring to please supervisors, or building my business, ministry, rather than taking the lead to talk through last nights ‘issue’.

Maybe I’ve treasured my gym time at the cost of planning, the evening walk, the date night, the family devotions or the Saturday outing?

Need I add the many temptations I’ve exposed myself to in moments I should have “plucked out my eye” (Mark 9:47) Instead.

And yet, I have kept the foot on the pedal of my ambition. Big business dreams, more profits, global outreach, new jobs, work promotions, and oh, Manchester City is doing great this season.

But what shall it profit a man to follow the entire football season and lose his daughter’s affection?

Or what shall it profit a man to stock the refrigerator weekly and miss several dinners with his wife?

God in his grace has been kind enough to preserve me in my folly of mixed priorities, and he still preserves many men.

But the real question is whether many neck-tied family heads (and aspiring husbands by the way), are not trumping on his mercy by chasing for more victories outside the institution that often suffers the most losses – the family?