Being too busy
Revelations 2:2-4
How many of us have become so busy and weary that we have lost our first love?
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A father and his young daughter were great friends and much in each other’s company. Then the father noted a change in his daughter. If he went for a walk, she excused herself from going. He grieved about it, but could not understand. When his birthday came, she presented him with a pair of exquisitely worked slippers, saying, “I have made them for you.”
Then he understood what had been the matter for the past three months, and he said, “My darling, I like these slippers very much, but next time buy the slippers and let me have you all the days. I would rather have my child than anything she can make for me.”
Some of us are so busy for the Lord that He cannot get much of us. To us He would say, “I know your works, your labor, your patience, but I miss the first love.”
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Most of us live extremely busy lives, no matter what age we are. Sometimes you have to sit back and wonder how we got to this point. So many things in our lives were designed to save time. Faster cars, faster computers, cell phones, microwaves, fast-food, you name it, it was designed to save time. Time for what, though? Instead of taking that time we’ve saved, instead we end up filling it with more things to do. We fill our lives with so many time saving things and strategies that we feel just plained rushed.
For some of us, that is a status symbol - something to be proud of. Something that says, you know what, I’m really busy, I’m somebody important - I’m successful. Look at all the things I do in a day.
But deep inside, there’s this desire for a simpler life, a slower life, a more meaningful life. We long for simplicity. Americans typically fall into this more so than Europeans, but that is quickly changing. We used to go home on vacation and feel so rushed and long to get back here where we could slow down a little bit and enjoy life again. But that seems to be changing these days. It seems that the world expects busyness.
Unfortunately, the result of this busyness in our lives tends to be alienation and emptiness. These days so many of us find ourselves stuck in a virtual world when talking to one another - emailing instead of talking face-to-face or even on the phone. Unfortunately more often than not, I find myself emailing somebody half way around the world that I don’t even know when my wife and kids are sitting right next to me, waiting for a moment of my time. How does that happen? How does this busyness take over our lives so quickly? Is that how we want to live? NO WAY!!! I don’t believe that for a second. But we get going so fast, that when we finally start to slow down and see where we are, we don’t have a clue how we got there. All we remember is the blurry view out the window.
More often than not, when our lives fill with this busyness, our relationships are the first things to suffer. We don’t have time to sit down and talk with our friends and family; and more importantly, we don’t seem to have time to sit down and talk to our Father, to God. We get so wrapped up in what we’re doing; so wrapped up in our own importance that we miss our time with God.
This isn’t just work that I’m talking about; this takes place in the church all the time. I find myself wrapped up in this a lot. Trying to make sure that everything is taken care of, everything is done, everything is just right and if it isn’t, I have to fix it. Forget about the real reason we’re all here, I have to fix this problem right now because if I don’t, the service won’t go well, people will be upset, etc. etc. etc. How nerve racking we really make our situations.
Do you really think that is how God wants us to live? Let’s take a look at Matthew 11:28-30: WOW!!! Jesus will give us rest - the burden he gives us is light? WOW!!! There are so many times that we feel the opposite, but why? Because the yokes that we put on ourselves aren’t light. The yokes that we put on one another aren’t light. Paul confronts this very same thing in Acts 15:10 when he addressed the church elders in Jerusalem. He says this (from the Message) "So why are you now trying to out-god God, loading these new believers down with rules that crushed our ancestors and crushed us, too?”
So don’t put on the heavy yoke of man and the rules he makes up in the name of God. Put on the yoke of Jesus, which is light and which is bearable.
So how do we do that? We do that by putting our focus on Christ. This doesn’t mean that we are always thinking “religious” thoughts or doing “spiritual” deeds. We don’t need to be doing these things to be focusing on Christ. I like this as an example of what this kind of focus, what this kind of simplicity in our lives really means:
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Francis de Sales, 17th cent. writer, said that Christ-like simplicity is similar to what we see in little children “who w/ one hand cling to their father, and w/ the other gather strawberries or blackberries along the hedges. For just like this, while you are gathering and dealing with the world’s goods you must always keep the other hand in your heavenly Father’s, turning to Him from time to time, to see if the way you behave and what you do pleases Him.”
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Doesn’t that just sum it up, though? Close your eyes and just picture that for a moment. Picture a child walking along a path with their hand in their dad’s, smiling, calm, and picking strawberries and blackberries; every so often looking up to see the approval in their dad’s eyes. Isn’t that a very calming thought? I believe that is just the kind of life that God wants for each and every one of us. And why? Because it is good. Because God wants us to enjoy and appreciate this wonderful world that he created and these lives he’s given us.
But how do we go about moving away from the busyness and getting back to the life that God wants? One of the most important things that I think we need to focus on first and one that you’ll hear quite often talked about is the need for a quiet time with God. A time that we set aside - a time that we commit to just be with God and let all the distractions fade away. This time is the most important time for us and yet it always seems the first to go when we begin focusing on the busyness. We need this time in our lives. We need this time for our spiritual growth, we need this time to reflect on things, and most importantly, we need this time to hear God and to talk to him.
Psalm 46:10(a)
We need quiet time for renewal
We need quiet time so we can remember who we are and not who the world tells us we are or who we should be.
We need quiet time to remember:
God’s love
to remember God’s plan for our lives
to remember that God’s plan is good
to remember that He will never leave or forsake us
We need quiet time to know who God is; we need this so we aren’t creating our own God in our mind - who we think he should be and who we want him to be.
We need quiet time to change; a time to question if we are the same person we were when we came to Christ, or if we have in fact moved on in our spiritual journey. To look honestly at ourselves and take inventory of where we are.
We need quiet time to be fed - Jesus tells us that man does not live on bread alone - we need the nourishment that being in God’s word and focusing on his presence brings.
We need quiet time to refocus - if we are too busy to spend time alone with God, then we are too busy. When we allow ourselves to slow down and take time alone with God, the blurriness around us fades, and life begins to refocus. At the same time, God beings to renew our strength.
Isaiah 40:28-31
One of the key things to remember is that being too busy isn’t just something that happens just outside of the church. I touched on this earlier, but want to re-emphasize that point. We can become too busy in the church. Doing so much for others, helping out so much, that we don’t take the time to relax in God and allow him and those around us to refill our own cups.
So many times you will find people like this (I have to work on this), doing everything they can, everything that nobody else is doing, and doing and doing and doing and then one day they just fall under all that weight. Look around for this happening in your brothers and sisters’ lives. The enemy can have us juggling so many balls in the air and all it takes is one thing to happen and everything comes crashing down. Let’s all work toward not letting that happen in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
Psalm 46:10
Additionally, we need to make sure that we are spending the time we need with each other; with our families, with our friends. Experiencing the fellowship and community in our lives that God truly desires for us. He didn’t create us as individuals destined for solitude; he created us to be a part of something bigger, part of a community. He created us with a desire to belong.
Let’s take the time with God that He wants; the time with God and with each other that we all need. Let the yoke that Jesus offers be the one you put on and not the yoke that others or even yourself would have you wear.
Let’s get busy stopping the busyness... Let’s not become so busy and overwhelmed with life that we forget our first love.
