QUICK THOUGHT The Idol of Busyness

Speaker 1: Welcome to Balancing the Christian Life. Quick Thoughts. I'm Dr Kenny Embry. Join me as we figure out what it means to live as Christians. I just picked up my smartphone to see what's going on In my notifications. I've got a few messages. Specifically, I've got 49. My washing machine said it was out of water. I fixed that several hours ago, so that's an old notification. Apparently, it's someone's birthday. I've saved $2 through one of my gas apps. Someone I barely know posted something on LinkedIn. The weather forecast is here on LinkedIn. The weather forecast is here. Costco wants me to spend more money. Last night the Reds beat the Pirates, and on and on and on. Most of this isn't worth much. Yes, at some point I need to go through the phone notifications and tell it what I care about and what I don't, but that's probably not going to be today. Picking up my phone, I feel busy . There's a lot of activity going on around me and I'm not sure it's helpful. There's something comforting about having a long to-do list. I would never admit this, but it makes me feel important. It also gives me something to complain about. I've met several people who always seem to have a crisis going on in their lives. They are constantly frantic, frazzled and have a short fuse. I often call this crowd people addicted to struggle If they don't have something to worry about. Give them a few minutes and they'll find something. There's a payoff for being constantly busy and distracted something. There's a payoff for being constantly busy and distracted. I call this the idol of busyness . I readily admit that most of us are busy because we are trying to keep all the spinning plates from falling. I've had two or three years now of plate spinning myself. But this kind of idolatry is dangerous because it allows you to frame yourself as a victim of your own story. Is dangerous because it allows you to frame yourself as a victim of your own story. To be fair, many of us are put in situations with few great alternatives, but embracing victimhood is almost always a losing strategy because it puts your decision-making ability in someone else's hands. It renders you powerless, which is never a good place to be. If only the world would change, you'd have all your problems fixed. Well, let's assume for a moment the world isn't changing. Let's assume you have decisions you can make to make things better, if not perfect, and let's assume for a moment maybe God has a vested interest in helping you rather than hurting you. So how can we be more productive with the idol of busyness? First, cultivate gratitude. I've heard a chorus of criticism about smartphones and social media. More recently, I've heard a lot of hang-wringing about artificial intelligence. If we could only get back to Mayberry, where all the gossip happened at Floyd's Barbershop and Barney was only allowed one bullet in his chest pocket, wouldn't that be better? Well, unfortunately that's fiction, and it was fiction in the 1960s as well. But more importantly, think about the things that genuinely make life better. You have a device in your pocket that connects you with almost everyone on earth, gives you access to almost all information you could ever want, and even tells you when you missed your turn and reroutes you in seconds. But let's put your phone away for a moment and marvel at just your bathroom, where you have something that takes care of your sewage, gives you hot water on demand and allows you to smell clean all day long. Then think for a moment about how all of that would be different 100 years ago, when your sewage was your problem, where your hot water was a luxury, where you had soap, because you made soap or clean water depended on you. I'm not going to call these things blessings, but I will say I'm grateful we figured these things out and I didn't have to depend on my ingenuity to make myself sanitary. All of these things come at prices. Smartphones, indoor plumbing and even the poisonous, highly processed foods we sometimes eat are all modern miracles of convenience and comfort. By the way, all of them have downsides and none of them should be used without some attention to what's good and what's bad. But please don't believe for a moment that someone is holding a gun to your head to eat Lucky Charms. You are the person who chooses to open the Facebook app or turn on the hot water. You don't have to and you can always choose not to, but the generation before you never had the option. Communication was harder, Finding information was harder, Living was harder. You don't have to, and that's something that should make you grateful. Second, if you want to overcome the idol of busyness, then ask God to help you concentrate. There are two verses I think about a lot. One is in the 46th Psalm. Yes, I'm taking it out of context a little, but I would contend it still has the same message Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. To paraphrase this verse, I think it says no matter how much you do, no matter how important you think you are, there's nothing you can do more important than God. So settle down. You aren't that important and that's a very good thing. The other verse is in the first chapter of Mark. It says Very early in the morning, while it was still dark , Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Jesus found a place to concentrate on what's truly important and what isn't. I don't do that and that's my mistake, which leads me to this last recommendation Learn to cut stuff out and stop worrying about what other people think. There's a true difference between being busy and making things better. If you give yourself some time to think, you can figure that out. When you're young, you worry about the fear of missing out, or FOMO. As you get older, you see the blessing of missing out. Let's take this to God, the blessing of missing out. Let's take this to God. Lord, help us to lose ourselves and find you. Help us to see ourselves as truly insignificant, so we can better see how important you are . You love us. You have promised to take care of us. Help us to trust that, In the name of our King, Amen. Okay, so now go out and be good and do good.