This week is a treadmill. When I got up Monday morning, the treadmill was already on and flying along at a faster pace than I can actually run. I was forced to hop on and hope that I could keep up! A picture comes to mind of those treadmill fails on youtube. There is usually an awful lot of flailing going on and most of the time someone ends up slamming into the wall.
It's just one of those weeks where the busyness is trying to run my life.
I came home from school today exhausted after two very long days as the start to my week. Yesterday we had conferences after school. Today started at 4:50 AM. I went to the gym, taught all day, dealt with crazy situations that only a teacher can understand, and I finished the day with two meetings after school.
My list of the things I still needed to do was hanging over me as soon as I walked in the door of my house. But I was just SO tired. I decided to lie down for just a few minutes before trying to accomplish anything. And you know what? I felt guilty. Yes, guilty.
I hate that busyness has so overtaken my life and this culture that I can’t rest without feeling guilty about it. Sure, the things that keep me busy are all basically good things, even necessary things. That’s not the problem. The problem is that I have lost the balance that I so desperately need in my life. There has to be a balance between productivity and rest.
As I was thinking about the idea of rest and God’s plan for it, I came across this quote from Mark Buchanan. It comes from his book called The Rest of God.
“In a culture where busyness is a fetish and stillness is laziness, rest is sloth. But without rest, we miss the rest of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply. ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’ Some knowing is never pursued, only received. And for that, you need to be still.”
Sometimes I think God is just waiting for us to slow down and rest in Him so he can speak to us! Are we so busy trying to do everything, be everything, that we can’t hear his voice?
Are we so worn out and exhausted that we are missing his calling for us in our effort to get everything on our lists done? I have a feeling that God's list for us is vastly different from our own lists...
Busyness is a problem. It’s an addiction. And I want to be free from its death grip!
Pause the treadmill. Breathe. Rest. Be still and know that He is God.