christian living on Busyness

Restlessness keeps the pedal to the metal. To offer a suggestive analogy in this vein: several years ago there was a recall on some Toyota vehicles. Evidently the cars would be given to sudden and unc...

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

If we’re ever concerned with being wrapped up in Christmas busyness, it may be worth considering the Italian legend of La Befana. The elderly Befana was in her home when suddenly she was visited by th...

Holy One, help us be still and know that you are God. Too often we move at such a hectic pace that we neglect our relationship with you. Our lives become full of distractions that are nothing but shif...

Gracious and Heavenly Father, In your word, you call us to be comforted first and foremost by You. But often, if we are honest, we look for comfort in different places. We look for comfort in our b...

Gracious and Merciful God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: When we wouldn’t love—You did. When we couldn’t do right—you could. When we wouldn’t give—You gave and gave all of yourself. So we come to You w...

Gracious God, we confess that we do not always listen to your calling for us. Instead we carry on with our busy lives, not being mindful of your voice, calling us to live for more than ourselves. Plea...

Heavenly Father, forgive us when we become so consumed with the details of life that we do not see the opportunities that you have placed before us. Open our eyes to your call to extend love, by commu...

Father God: It is sometimes hard for us to understand what You do. We are in trouble. We want You to come rescue us right now, like the cavalry riding over a hill or the Lone Ranger appearing out of n...

Pastor: “O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; heal me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled. All: “My soul also is grea...

I might not be the best person to be writing this.  After an eleven-year career in business in my twenties and early thirties, I’ve been an ordained pastor now for nearly twenty-seven years. There are...

Sometimes it takes a wake-up call, doesn't it, to alert us to the fact that we're hurrying through our lives instead of actually living them; that we're living the fast life instead of the...

Gratitude and wonder are squeezed out when our lives are packed full with busyness and responsibilities…There is simply no room, no time to notice. We experience God’s gifts when we pause long enough ...

Many of us try to shove spiritual transformation into the nooks and crannies of a life that is already unmanageable, rather than being willing to arrange our life for what our heart most wants. We thi...

In a knowledge-based economy, the way we make ourselves seen and even validated is through more work. Busyness shows us that we’re valuable, contributing members to society. So whether we can’t stop c...

I should have learned by now that life never settles down for long.

Our task is to help people concentrate on the real but often hidden event of God’s active presence in their lives. Hence, the question that must guide all organizing activity in a parish is not how to...

Busyness allows us to avoid the deepest questions of our souls. It keeps us at arm's length from our truest, most authentic selves. And when we don't know our deepest, most authentic selves, w...

In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling describes the challenge of experiencing God’s presence, even in the relatively slow world (in comparison to our own) of the fourteenth-century: ...

Holy One, there is something I wanted to tell you but there have been errands to run, bills to pay, arrangements to make, meetings to attend, friends to entertain, washing to do . . . and I for...

In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , written almost a hundred years ago, Thomas Kelly describes the true heart of the problem related to the complexity of our lives: Let me fir...

In his excellent book, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World , Mike Cosper explains the value in persevering through the difficult realities of practicing solitude. ...

Did you know that the first group of people to use clocks were Christian monks? Monks desired the ability to pray around a rigorous and exact prayer schedule. Benedict of Nursia, the great architect o...

Looking into his life and out to the wider world, Kenneth Gergen writes about The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, arguing that “social saturation brings with it a general lo...

The problem we face today needs very little time for its statement. Our lives in a modern city grow too complex and overcrowded. Even the necessary obligations which we feel we must meet grow overnigh...

In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. … Psychiatrist Carl Jung once remarked, “Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil.”

The adjective busy set as a modifier to pastor should sound to our ears like adulterous to characterize a wife, or embezzling to describe a banker. It is an outrageous scandal, a blasphemous affront. ...

Thomas Merton describes those who never experience the gift of a contemplative life. His explanation for why some people never experience this can be found in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation: [T...

A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will ...

A fanatic has been described as a person who, when unsure of his direction, doubles his speed.