Flare Request Friday: Disarming Busy

We make time for the things that are important to us.

Let me rephrase:  YOU make time for what is important to you.

You can tell yourself you are busy. You can tell yourself there is no time. But you have no more or less time than anyone else today, and you choose how you will spend it.  

This is a hard, heavy, difficult, truth. This is so difficult I would have trouble saying it to your face, so I will just write it on the internets. I am not a huge proponent of certainty in much of anything, but I feel pretty certain about this.  

If you need to...

• Spend more time with God personally
• Spend more time with your family
• Spend more time on your calling
• Exercise
• Eat better by taking a more active role in cooking, shopping, or planning your meals
• Spend more time with friends
• Get to know your neighbors
• Get in touch with your mission

If you need to do any of these things OR ANYTHING ELSE, and you have heard yourself claiming there is no time, you have two options:

1: Forget about ever doing any of these things.

2: MAKE time for them.

Circumstances (or something else) will conspire to keep you from everything you know you should do. There will always be a lot of things keeping you from some of the best things. You will always be busy, until you die or get old enough to spend your days wasting away in regret for the things you never had time for. 

Remember when you WERE IN HIGH SCHOOL AND THOUGHT YOU WERE BUSY?!?!?!?!?! Have you seen the look of rage in parent's eyes when college kids talk about how busy they are? Those nostalgic, condescending feelings are ugly, but the eye-rolls reveal some truth: you will tend to get more busy, rarely less. Busy is like gravity, sucking us all in. Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our...WAIT.

Just.

Stop.

What should you do - now? What needs to change right now? What have you been too busy for? Those are the things YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO PUT OFF. The absence of those things in your life is most likely killing you slowly. 

(I preach most passionately sermons that are directed at me.) 

I have been running from rest. I have been running from quiet. I have been playing the busy card with my family and my personal time spent in the silence. I have been utterly addicted to the noise. I have needed time away from the racket.

Will you pray for me?  If you're not too busy...