Beating Busyness
If busyness is a problem
for you, you may be in too much of a rush to read this. But invest just a few minutes,
if you can. It’ll be worth it.
First of all, you’re not alone. Busyness is the biggest obstacle for most of
the people who have completed the “Obstacles to Growth Survey.” But actually, that statement doesn’t quite
capture the pervasiveness of this problem.
This statement might: the average score for busyness is almost
twice as high as the average score for the second largest obstacle in our
survey!
If busyness appears to be a major stumbling block in
your spiritual development, know that you can do something about
it. You must make a choice,
though. You must choose to simplify
your life.
What exactly does that mean? It means that you adopt a lifestyle that
allows you the room for the things that matters most in this world: loving God,
building relationship with God, and genuinely loving those around you. That may entail choosing to do fewer things
in life, choosing to make space for yourself, learning to sometimes say “no.”
Some understandably protest at this point: “But I
can’t just say no to my boss, to my kids, to my spouse, to my pastor, to all
those who need me! I have no options here!”
That may be true – today.
Because of your current responsibilities, you may have very few options
for beating busyness at this moment, but you can certainly work toward a
lifestyle that is less complex, less crowded, less cumbersome. If your job is the culprit, you can set
goals to work fewer hours – or maybe get a different job eventually. If child care responsibilities are the
culprit, you can set the goal to get more help with the kids. If your well-intended service to others is
the culprit, you might have to back off some of those altruistic activities. For example, you might have to make a
decision to do less in your church, as heretical as that might sound at
first. Ironically, and tragically, many
people have become so busy “doing things” for God that they have all but
eliminated the available time to know and love God.
For some, choosing a simpler lifestyle may mean
putting an end to the toxic accumulation of possessions in your life. Richard Foster’s Freedom of Simplicity
makes this point eloquently:
“Contemporary culture is plagued by the passion to
possess. The unreasoned boast abounds
that the good life is found in accumulation, that ‘more is better.’ Indeed, we often accept this notion without
question, with the result that the lust for affluence in contemporary society
has become psychotic: it has completely lost touch with reality. Furthermore, the pace of the modern world
accentuates our sense of being fractured and fragmented. We feel strained, hurried, breathless. The complexity of rushing to achieve and
accumulate more and more frequently threatens to overwhelm us; it seems that
there is no escape from the rat race.
“Christian simplicity frees us from modern
mania. It brings sanity to our
compulsive extravagance, and peace to our frantic spirit…It allows us to see
material things for what they are – goods to enhance life, not to oppress life.”
The point here is that most of us have chosen our
lifestyle and our priorities.
Accordingly, we have chosen the level of busyness that accompanies that
lifestyle. And if our level of busyness
is a choice, we also choose to move toward the opposite of an over-extended
life. We can choose a life without
hurry, a life of serenity, a life of control, a life of balance.
Many have written books and magazine articles that
offer techniques for beating busyness and for adopting a simpler
lifestyle. It’s worth taking the time
to consider what these folks have to say.
We have compiled a brief list of a some of these resources below. If you do not have the time to read any of
them, though, please remember that the bottom line in all of this is that by
God’s grace, almost all of us have can choose to be less busy. Choose a life that puts God at the center,
rather than one that relegates God to being just one more thing on the to-do
list.
Books for Beating Busyness:
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A Few Magazine Articles on the Subject:
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