“Come away with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”
Mark 6:30
How often I need to hear these words of Jesus. In a culture, especially a Christian culture that seems to thrive on the “I’m busy for Jesus” mentality, we need to be reminded that there is such a thing as too busy for Jesus. Two things I must remember:
1) My worth is not in what I do or how busy I am. I’ve gone through phases in life where I would show off my over-crowded date book like it’s a prize. I would perceive busy-ness as importance. “Look how many things depend on me doing them.” Nowadays (at least most of the time) I try to remember that my worth is not in what I do or how busy I am, but in who I am in Christ. I have value because He says so. I have value to God and others as I allow Him to abide in me and I in Him.
2) Speaking of abiding, if I get too busy it becomes easier to crowd out my time with Jesus. “I have too much to do…Jesus give me strength to do it all.” Like He really thinks the doing is more important than the being. This is not the abundant life He desires for me. The abundant life comes from being with Jesus, allowing Him to live through me, surrendering myself each day to Him. This takes a calm and submissive spirit that is denied in the frenzy.
“To allow one’s self to…surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
Thomas Merton