Intentional Busyness

Wake up. Eat breakfast. Take a shower. Make the bed. Study calculus. Study microeconomics. Go on a walk. Eat lunch. Go to Wal-mart. Go to the library. Write some emails. Make brownies. Read the chapter for Bible study. Learn how to speed-read. Eat dinner. Go to Sam’s and price check some food for the retreat. Fill up the car with gas. Go to Bible study. Wind down on facebook. Write a list for tomorrow. Write one last email. Do devotions. Go to bed.

Life is busy. We all have stuff to do, places to be, people to talk to. Busyness is the plague of American society, but it’s the plague we’ve chosen for ourselves. We may complain about how busy we are, but deep down inside we like being busy. We like having stuff to do. It makes us feel important. I think I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: In America, being busy is a virtue. We respect people who get a lot done. If anyone is guilty of being busy it’s me. The above schedule is what a normal day can look like for me. Granted, I’m not usually that efficient, but I can be if I really try. I am a master of doing many, many things. Now, I don’t think that is wrong in itself, but I think it quickly can become wrong depending on the motivation and the activities. It says in Ephesians 5:16 to redeem the time because the days are evil. I can bring glory to God by not sitting around wasting my life playing solitaire, but rather using my talents to organize things and use the mind He has giving me to learn calculus and microeconomics. But the real issue is…do I do that? Do I use my activities to bring Him glory, or do I use it to glorify myself? (Ouch. This is getting painful. I want to write about something else right now.) The truth is that it doesn’t matter how many times I give God glory, what matters is how many times I DON’T. That is what needs to change; That is the real issue. It doesn’t matter how many things I do during the day if I don’t do it for the glory of God. He would rather I do one thing for Him as opposed to twenty things for me.

Let me talk about another aspect of redeeming the time. This one is also an area I need to work on. Colossians 4:5 says, “Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time.” This says the same thing as Ephesians 5:16, except it adds the part about “those who are outside.” Who are those people? From the context I am pretty confident that Paul is talking about unbelievers, but if we take it literally it is talking about people OUTSIDE; basically anyone who doesn’t live in the same house as we do. Where am I going with this? Simply this: we have a chance to redeem the time and glorify God in every situation, whether that be standing in line at Wal-mart or going on a walk. We interact with people every day, and we have control over how we act in those situations. We can treat the clerk at Wal-mart like every other customer she has helped that day, or we can make an effort and ask her how her day is going. We can slow down enough to hold open the door for the lady with a stroller, or we can breeze out the door while looking at our watch and thinking about how much we have left to do and never even see her. We can get so focused on our own list of stuff to check off that we stop caring about those “other” people; they are simply in the same location as we are, it has nothing to do with us. But what if it does have something to do with us? What if we look at every encounter with a stranger as an appointment set up by God? That changes things, doesn’t it? We don’t know what one kind word can mean for someone. We don’t know how God can use a conversation at the bookstore. We probably won’t ever know, but that shouldn’t matter. We need to rip the focus off of ourselves and our schedule and look at life through the perspective of putting other’s interests first for the glory of God. It sounds so easy. It is so hard. Sometimes we won’t want to. Sometimes it will make us late. Sometimes it won’t be appreciated. Most times we won’t get to tell people the reason why we do it. None of that matters. What matters is the condition of our heart. God will know why we do it, and that is all the reason I need.