busyness on God's Provision

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...

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...

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...

God does lead his people on roundabout ways. He does not move hastily. He is never in a hurry. It is one of his most irritating qualities.

In our prayers this morning, when I say, “Lord of all glory,” please respond by saying “Hear our prayer”. Lord of all glory... hear our prayer . Our God speaks tenderly to His people and cares for th...

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...

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 ...

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...

God of grace and mercy, how often we choose to set our eyes on things below rather than things above. We allow ourselves to be ruled by our calendars rather than our King. We honor our own comfort bef...

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...

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: ...

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...

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...

When we turn toward Advent, the name on our lips is Emmanuel, God with us . So much in Christian faith relies on what the faithful actually mean when we say that name. Western Christianity has fo...

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...

This busy world will surge about you with the tread of restless feet and the throb of restless hearts. And little that you will do will seem to make a pause in the rush of things. But you may in Chris...

In the middle of a prayer, whether praying silently or aloud, my mind would bounce from one thing to the next. Dear God in heaven, I pray that you heal my friend who has cancer. Work in her life now i...

The Japanese have a word, ikigai, that captures this sense of drive we all have inside us. Roughly translated as “the happiness of constant busyness,” ikigai reflects your awareness of your life’s pur...

Dear Lord, We come to you this evening with great expectations. Expectations that your Son Jesus has been born, and that his life is a light for us and all people. We come with expectations that He c...

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...

Sometimes we are not present because we are trying to play God—we move too fast and try to accomplish too much without acknowledging the limitations of our humanity and the constraints of our time. . ...

Recently I was running the vision of our church by my thera­pist, who is this Jesus-loving, ubersmart PhD. Our dream was to re-architect our communities around apprenticeship to Jesus. (That feels so ...

Who's Playing Hooky? There’s a local market not too far from the church – and, sometimes, I’ll go there after Sunday morning services to grab some sweet corn to go with dinner (it’s New Jersey, b...

The Puritan preacher Cotton Mather, hard at work over the business of ministry, prayer, and writing, wrote over his study door in large letters, “BE SHORT.” Today, he might well have written "MAK...

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. ...

The Sabbath is a gift we do not know how to receive. In a world of doing, going, and producing, we have no use for a gift that invites us to stop. But that is the original gift: a gift of rest.

We confess, O God, that the Christmas rush is typical of our efforts to live the Christian life. We pursue peace on earth, but we end up with frayed nerves and short tempers. We wish good will to all,...

One of the most convicting things I have recently come to realize about Jesus is that He was never, not once, in a hurry.

I cannot live in the kingdom of God with a hurried soul.

Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God.