Ask anyone how they’re doing. If you don’t receive a “good,” it is highly likely you’ll hear “busy.” We are always busy. Jumping from one box on our crowded calendar to the next. There seems to always be so much to do and not enough time to do it.
Why doesn’t it seem to ever die down? Why do we fill any window that spontaneously frees up? Fundamentally, it’s because we know we’re not promised tomorrow. God has wired it into our system to know that life is short and our time is limited (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
So we stay busy because it makes us feel like we’re doing the most with our time. Places to be and things to do make us feel important, that we are needed, that we have a purpose. We feel useful and, in a way, loved because someone expects us at a certain time.
While we do have God-given responsibilities to attend to, businesses for the sake of staying busy is otherwise known as hurry sickness. We are amusing ourselves to death, slowly killing ourselves one checked box at a time. When do we rest?
“When we try to take control, we can quickly throw stillness and peace out the window and say hello to anxiousness, discontentment, and the loud hum of the world’s constant and overwhelming noise.”
-Céline Mutzke
We need to rest. We need quiet mornings, evenings to wind down, and at least one day a week to be still and enjoy our surroundings. Just as sleep is a healing process needed for several hours every night, we need quiet during our days to realign with what really matters.
We don’t need to have a handle on everything because God is in control. We don’t need to know everything, just God. We can go to sleep because God is going to stay up to take care of everything. We don’t need to be in a hurry because God is not in a hurry.
He knows the purpose of all the things we can’t reconcile into a greater theme. It is our job to trust in that reality, to rest in the truth that He has everything under control (Ecclesiastes 3:11). While it is our nature to say, “Show me, and I’ll trust You,” God says, “Trust Me, and I’ll show you.”