Have I let busyness rob me of knowing God the way I might if I wasn't so busy?
I've been pondering this question for a few weeks. It's a challenging one to think about.
We live in a culture that prizes busyness. The answer to the question of how things are going is often that we're busy. And when we're not busy it can feel like we don't have the right answer to that question.
This thinking has infiltrated the church as well. There's a subtle pressure to add more volunteer time to the schedule if we can't continually tell people how busy we are. We look up to those who have filled their weekends and evenings with service.
But when we fill our schedules too full, often one of the first things that gets pushed out is our time with God. And this robs us of knowing God the way we could. Even when we're filling our time with serving at church, that busyness robs us of knowing God the way we could.
Don't get me wrong . . . I'm not saying there is anything inherently wrong with serving at church. In fact, I believe we should all be taking an active role in the church we belong to. But, when the time we spend serving our church makes us so busy we have no time for relationship with God, we have a problem.
How do we respond to this? How do we stop allowing busyness to rob us of knowing God?
We have to learn to create a life with space in it. Space, so we're not running from one thing to the next unsure if we'll be on time. Space, so we can linger with a friend in need. Space, so we can spend time with God and listen to His voice.
We have to learn to slow down - to stop living life in a hurry.
It doesn't come easy. It's a counter-cultural move.
I think we need to change what we celebrate and look up to. Instead of celebrating busyness and looking up to those who are really busy, we need to learn to celebrate being unable to talk about how busy we are.
We need to change the way we look at how we spend our time. We need to see our time with God as the most important thing. We need to move our time with God onto the non-negotiable list and allow other things to go when we don't have enough time to do it all.
Have you allowed busyness to rob you of knowing God the way you could if you weren't so busy?
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Monday, August 25, 2014
Regretting the Hurry
"Someone asked me recently what was my biggest regret in life. I thought a moment, surveying the vast and cluttered landscape of my blunders and losses, the evil I have done and the evil that's been done againstme.
'Being in a hurry,' I said.
'Pardon?'
'Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all that rushing.'
Through all that haste, I thought I was marking up time. It turns out I was throwing it away."
(Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God, page 45)
Go back to the beginning and read the quoted passage above again. Slow down while you read it. Take time to reflect on what Mark Buchanan is saying here.
How would you answer the question about what your biggest regret was in life? What do you see as your biggest regret?
It usually doesn't take us long to come up with things we regret. Choices we made. People we chose to keep in our lives and people we chose to remove from our lives. Jobs we chose to take or not to take. Things we chose to do with our money or possessions and things we chose not to do with them.
When I really stop to think about it, despite all the choices I've made that are regrets, I have to say that I've come to agree with Buchanan on this one. My biggest regret is being in a hurry and it's the root of most of the decisions I regret making.
When we're living life in a hurry, our decisions suffer. We're so concerned about getting to the next thing that we run from one thing to the next with no time to think.
Are you living life in a hurry?
Do you see living life in a hurry as a regret? Why or why not?
I wonder what would happen if we became intentional about not living life in a hurry. What would happen if we slowed down enough to be really present in the moment and gave ourselves the room in our schedules to think?
I think that rather than feeling like we couldn't possibly get everything done, we would find that we have the time to do what we need to do without a problem.
'Being in a hurry,' I said.
'Pardon?'
'Being in a hurry. Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all that rushing.'
Through all that haste, I thought I was marking up time. It turns out I was throwing it away."
(Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God, page 45)
Go back to the beginning and read the quoted passage above again. Slow down while you read it. Take time to reflect on what Mark Buchanan is saying here.
How would you answer the question about what your biggest regret was in life? What do you see as your biggest regret?
It usually doesn't take us long to come up with things we regret. Choices we made. People we chose to keep in our lives and people we chose to remove from our lives. Jobs we chose to take or not to take. Things we chose to do with our money or possessions and things we chose not to do with them.
When I really stop to think about it, despite all the choices I've made that are regrets, I have to say that I've come to agree with Buchanan on this one. My biggest regret is being in a hurry and it's the root of most of the decisions I regret making.
When we're living life in a hurry, our decisions suffer. We're so concerned about getting to the next thing that we run from one thing to the next with no time to think.
Are you living life in a hurry?
Do you see living life in a hurry as a regret? Why or why not?
I wonder what would happen if we became intentional about not living life in a hurry. What would happen if we slowed down enough to be really present in the moment and gave ourselves the room in our schedules to think?
I think that rather than feeling like we couldn't possibly get everything done, we would find that we have the time to do what we need to do without a problem.
Friday, August 22, 2014
Five Minute Friday: Change
It's Friday, which means it's time for Five Minute Friday. This week the word is "change."
Do you embrace change? Or do you fight against it?
Or maybe you find yourself somewhere in the middle of those extremes? You don't excitedly seek after change, but you don't run form it either.
Whatever the case, the one thing we can be sure of in life is that we will have to deal with change. Change in our lives because of things we do. Change in circumstance because of choices we made. Change in our lives because of things others do. Changes in circumstance because of choices others made. Sometimes we choose the change and sometimes we don't.
The one thing we can be sure of is that change in evitable. And as followers of Christ, change is something that happens constantly in our lives - or, it should be.
When we choose to follow Christ, we being a process of transformation - of change. And that process of change in a lifelong process. We're constantly being changed to become more and more like Christ.
When we stop to look back over the years, we can see evidence of this change. And evidence of how we responded to it. We can see the times we embraced the change and we can see the times where we fought against it. But the important thing is that we give glory to God for the ways He has changed us.
Do you embrace change? Or do you fight against it?
Or maybe you find yourself somewhere in the middle of those extremes? You don't excitedly seek after change, but you don't run form it either.
Whatever the case, the one thing we can be sure of in life is that we will have to deal with change. Change in our lives because of things we do. Change in circumstance because of choices we made. Change in our lives because of things others do. Changes in circumstance because of choices others made. Sometimes we choose the change and sometimes we don't.
The one thing we can be sure of is that change in evitable. And as followers of Christ, change is something that happens constantly in our lives - or, it should be.
When we choose to follow Christ, we being a process of transformation - of change. And that process of change in a lifelong process. We're constantly being changed to become more and more like Christ.
When we stop to look back over the years, we can see evidence of this change. And evidence of how we responded to it. We can see the times we embraced the change and we can see the times where we fought against it. But the important thing is that we give glory to God for the ways He has changed us.
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