Busyness and Rest

Busyness and Rest

How does our obsession with busyness get in the way of our journey towards spiritual growth?

I have to be honest with you. This morning was a hard morning. My alarm went off and it took all that I had in me to get out of bed. I wanted to sleep. I was exhausted. This week as a whole was rough. We all have days like this and I am beyond grateful that my kids are often a great encouragement to get moving… because if I don’t get moving, they won’t either. They give my morning purpose.

This week I came across an article written by Richella Parham for Renovaré. The article was all about the spiritual discipline of rest. At the start of the article she quotes Jim Smith who said “The num­ber one ene­my of Chris­t­ian spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion today is exhaus­tion.”

So true. When I am exhausted… all I want to do is curl up and escape the world. It makes me a terrible husband, father, and an extremely lazy pastor.

As I spent time thinking about what Richella wrote in her article… I found myself reflecting on our obsession with busyness. Growing up I was taught (often subliminally) that success meant busyness. You could rate your success based on how many emails you receive a day, how many pressing and urgent fires you could put out, how people people relied on you, how many people you had working underneath you, how many business trips you had to take. The point of life was to climb the ladder, gain the respect of important people, make yourself seem irreplaceable… often at the expense of your family, health, and relationships.

I will be the first to admit that I still have a lot of room to grow in this area. There are times I hear things that come out of my mouth and I cringe. I rarely take actual time off. I find myself awake at random hours thinking about things far outside of my control. I find myself constantly worried about what people think… am I doing enough? Am I enough? I imagine I am not alone.

What toll does that take on our spiritual lives? This obsession with DOING and BEING everything to everyone? This obsession with success?

Maybe there is a better way to look at all of this. What if we just stopped? What if we just rested? What if instead of focusing on what others think of us we realize that what God thinks matters far more? What if we find our identity in Him and not our resume?

Why do we feel this compulsion to begin with?

I am working on this. You could say I am a “work addict” in recovery. I want to be a better husband and father. I want to savor time with people. I want all of my relationships to be bathed in the love and mercy I see in Christ. Whatever work I do I want to come from a deep, intimate, life giving place where I am connected to my savior.

Instead of running on fumes… I want to run on His power.

So let’s agree to take time. To rest. To find our center and plant our flag on the foundation of Jesus.