One reaction to profound tragedy is for a person to become frantically busy with all sorts of unimportant tasks or projects. It’s a way of deflecting the pain and fear caused by our circumstances. Constant activity does nothing to resolve the problem, but rather keeps one from thinking about it. Social commentators have described the daily lives of many Americans in a similar way.
We are busy – extraordinarily busy. Watch people drive their cars, walk through the grocery store, even eat their food. We’re fast in everything because we always have somewhere to go and something to do. Sometimes we have to stop in the middle of what we are doing to check what comes next!
We celebrate our busyness and brag about it to other people, in a humble way, “I’m exhausted. I just can’t keep up with everything!” But the one thing we do not ask ourselves is: “Am I busy doing what is most important?” It can almost seem that our goal is to be busy, to be occupied doing something. Sometimes people come to this realization in the latter years of their life and will even admit, “I was so busy doing so many things I thought were necessary and I missed out on what was most important.”
In our society which encourages us to discover for ourselves what our lives are all about, we have unconsciously slipped into killing ourselves with activity only to kill time. Since we’re not sure what the purpose of our lives is, we stay busy so that we don’t have to even think about that question, much less answer it.
Could it be that the purpose of our lives is not as complex or unknowable as we have made it out to be? Is it possible the answer to a meaningful, noble life is actually quite simple? The answers Jesus Christ offers us for these questions are intriguing to say the least. If you have vague yet recurring thoughts that maybe you are stuck in the rut of killing yourself but are just killing time, join us this Sunday morning for our worship service. You owe it to yourself to start living instead of only being busy.
Sunday Morning Worship – 10:00 am