busyness on Wants

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

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...

Aren’t you like me, hoping that some person, thing, or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don’t you often hope: “May this book, idea, course, trip, jo...

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...

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...

Here is a spiritual peculiarity to explore: that eternity is what we crave, and the first thing our disillusioned brains think to do is cram it into the hours of the working week.

The picture shows cartoon villain Cruella de Vil, bloodshot eyes staring straight ahead, hands clutching the wheel of her infamous coupe, black-and-white hair waving wildly in the wind, oversi...

Precisely because our frenzy is fundamentally aimless while remaining driven, we set ourselves goals whose main purpose is to keep the frenzy going until it consummates itself in sloth. If at present ...

If you ever find yourself sympathizing with Charles Dickens’ character Ebenezer Scrooge regarding the commercialization of Christmas, you’re not alone—this has been a common complaint for quite some t...

More enslaving than our occupations, however, are our preoccupations. To be pre-occupied means to fill our time and place long before we are there. This is worrying in the more specific sense of the w...

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...

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...

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

Are these hyperscheduled, overactive individuals really creating anything new? Are they guilty of passion in any way? Do they have a new vision for their government? For their community? Or for themse...

The witness of Christian history is that the ambitious need quiet hearts. We need ancient paths for our modern, busy lives that teach us to be settled with God in an unsettling world.

The truth, however, is that when we say yes to invitations that keep us compulsively busy, we may be exhibiting a lazy ambivalence that actually keeps us distracted from the invitations that matter mo...

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...

We have the freedom to make choices that can lead to blessing and favor or painful consequences. Battling busyness requires me to take a look inside my heart to make sure that my choices align with my...

Relationships take time, but we don’t want to take the time. In reality, too busy is a myth. People make time for the things that are really important to them.”

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...

There are people who do not live their present life; it is as if they were preparing themselves, with all their zeal, to live some other life, but not this one. And while they do this, time goes by an...

Of course, speed has a role in the workplace. A deadline can focus the mind and spur us on to perform remarkable feats. The trouble is that many of us are permanently stuck in deadline mode, leaving l...

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...

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...

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 ...

In a study conducted by Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, researchers discovered what most of us already know: people do not like to be left alone with their own tho...

Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes...

My temptation is to tackle everything at once, or nothing at all.

Our culture invites us to experience everything! If we fail to take advantage of it all, we think we are missing out. But honestly, the web of invitations we are called to navigate is massive and c...