I'm not sure if you noticed or not, but Missy (Bullock) and I were pretty busy this last Fall. We had every weekend booked with a major retreat or event from Labor Day through Thanksgiving. Yes, we were pretty busy all right. In fact, we were inappropriately busy.
I got to feeling pretty exhausted during that stretch, but I also felt some other things too; I felt distracted, I felt distanced from God and from life-giving friendships, and I felt guilty for reinforcing a negative example.
We are daily inundated with examples of people who work their lives away. And we are inundated with a myriad voices that tell us we should be working our lives away. "We're not working hard enough." "We're being poor stewards of our time." "We'll never be able to afford that item or that experience." "There are still so many good things to do, so many right things to do."
Perhaps this is especially difficult for us as Christians. Not only do we suffer under the Puritan work ethic and the idea that "everything we do should be done as though unto God," but we also struggle under the "tyranny of the good." So many important ministry opportunities tug at us. How could we ever say "no" to something that would glorify God?
Yet my own busy season causes me to stop and ask how much of that tyrannical good, how much of that "activity" is really in God's best interest.
Sure, just about every event we had this Fall was a success and provided spiritual insight or encouragement, but at what cost? What did it cost Missy and me in our friendships and our own relationships with Christ? What did it cost in poor examples to others who either felt guilt in comparison to our "ministry schedule" or who were encouraged to go and do likewise?
As I look at the results of this Fall on my life, I see that my friendships lost some of their richness. I see that my relationship with God lost some of its intimacy. I see that the integrity of my life, the idea that being in relationship with the Creator can make a difference, suffered.
Our society teaches me to find much of my personal value in the things I do. I complain about my busy schedule in a way that allows me to brag just a little. I list the many things I am involved in with a heavy sigh, but also with a grasp at personal value. I hide my insecurities behind my busyness. This keeps me from
honesty as well as from a vulnerable relationship with Christ. Without confronting this, I keep the cycle and model it to you.
The Quaker Testimony of Simplicity used to provide a powerful expression of God as sufficient for all our needs. We need to recapture this Testimony in a way that will provide an equally powerful expression of God for our day. Not only do we struggle with a dependence upon "things," I believe we struggle with a dependence upon "activity."
It is time for us to live as though we actually do find our worth in God, and not in our position or our important schedule.
It is time for us to live as though we actually do value our relationship with Christ, and believe this relationship can have deep intimacy, given the appropriate investment of our time.
It is time for us to model to our youth, our faith community, and our society that God can effectively guide us through the shoals of the tyranny of the good and lead us into centered, focused living.
I apologize for my poor example this Fall and commit to you all to not let it happen again. Keep me to it!
These articles are from Resources
for Fostering Vital Friends Meetings
See also: the FGC Quaker Library
