Remember the old saying, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop?” I’m not totally sure what that means but I think the idea is that staying busy keeps you out of trouble – so stay busy. I have discovered in my own life that busy hands can also be the devil’s workshop for believers. It’s not that the “busy hands” are involved in sinful things, but rather they leave no margins for the deeper and more important things of God. It’s amazing how many believers do not have time for the things of God because of so many commitments to “other good things.”
As I survey my own life and the lives of many other believers I know, the “drug of choice” of our culture seems to be busyness and constant connection. The more we do, the more significant we feel – productive, included, achieving, connected. Our children are most prone to the busyness and feel the pressure of it. The Midland school system had a rash of teenage suicides a few years ago that left everyone breathless. Most of these young people were not abuse victims, they weren’t strung out on drugs, and they weren’t from “bad families.” Several were popular, high -achievers in their schools. Interviews later with kids at risk for suicide revealed that these elementary, junior high, and high school students felt so much pressure to perform, to be part of the “in crowd,” and to “do everything” that they were contemplating suicide rather than face a life of that kind of pressure and busyness.
Think about it. Even when adults get together it’s not long before they start comparing their weekly or monthly itineraries – the job, the early morning meetings, the workouts, the evening meetings, the basketball, volleyball, and the baseball games they had to attend or travel to. Christians get to throw in all their ministry commitments on top of that. It’s as if being way overbooked in your life is a badge of honor or an indicator of significance. God’s injunction to David to “Be still and know that I am God” is still quoted but is typically something we aspire to do rather than something we actually do. Even when the preacher quotes it, everyone winks in their heart knowing that he isn’t all that serious because right after the sermon he will be asking his people to commit to serving an additional night of the week in some ministry.
There is something in our fallen nature that wants to work. Maybe it gives us the illusion of self-sufficiency or gives us a reason not to do any introspection or evaluation of our lives. For the most part, God didn’t have to command his people to work, but to take a day off from work every week. Obviously the Sabbath was created to honor the Lord but also to bless God’s people. Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. We need the rest. We need the margins in our lives.
How many times do we turn down a “divine appointment” to speak into someone’s life, to disciple someone, to share our faith with a friend at the office, to have a hurting friend come stay at our house for a few days, etc. because we know that to do so would demand time and relationship capital that we don’t have because we are already “all booked up?” I fear we often miss the most important things (myself included) because we have no holy margins in our lives for significant time with God or for those little detours he wants us to take to touch a life, to plant a seed, or to water what someone else has already done. I’m afraid that someday we’ll meet Jesus and point out all the hard work we did for him and everything we built in his name. He’ll smile and tell us how much he appreciated our efforts. He might even tell us that what we built was impressive…however, it just wasn’t what he wanted us to build because we got so little direct input from him. We can be like a builder who builds an amazing house for a client without having any real conversations about what they are looking for or without consulting them in the process to see if he is on track with their vision and desires. That’s a pretty risky way to build a house. I’ve known builders who were just too busy to have those ongoing meetings with their clients and in the end there were always some problems. If we are too busy to meet, we can be like that as builders of God’s house on the earth.
I’ve always been impressed with the focus of Jesus on a few primary things in his life that always took precedent over everything else. He kept his small group to twelve. Bigger isn’t always better. He turned down invitations to hold month long healing conferences even when he was trending. He often stole away to spend quiet time with the Father when there was so much that “still needed to be done,” and he had time to take detours on his way to some town because the Father showed him someone who needed a touch on the way. If Jesus had operated on highly scheduled agendas, I think he would have had far less impact on the world and would have walked in much less power than he did.
Jesus, Paul, and the other great men of the New Testament seemed to live by God’s agenda for their lives rather than the world’s agenda, cultural norms, or even by all the demands of the church. In review, their lives seem sort of ragged and even ill-planned, at times, but look at the impact.
The world will not relent. Satan will not relent. Everywhere you turn someone will ask for your time and it will all be good things. We need to establish some holy margins, a Sabbath principle, in our lives so that we have time for God and time for those little detours that bear so much fruit. We’ll need to pray and will have to decide to stop living at a crazy, spirit-killing pace. We’ll have to prune some things, but pruning always produces more fruit in the end. We’ll have to be the “bad guy” to our kids to trim their schedules but our lives cannot be defined or driven by cultural norms.
By definition, Christians must be counter-cultural. If we are like the culture then we loose our power to change the culture. God will have to show you which parts to trim but my guess is that we all need to trim some things to create margins for us to hear and obey God. Anyway…think about it…if you can find the time. Blessings.
