Lots and lots of time

“Our adversary the devil majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us involved in muchness and manyness he will rest satisfied.”

                                       Richard Foster in Celebration of Discipline

Everyone has pet peeves. People who chew their food with their mouth open, teen agers somehow symbiotically connected to their I-Phone and not, as you would expect a minister to despise, cell phones going off in church but people who actually feel the need to answer their phone while at church – during worship, during a wedding (and worst!) during a funeral. But right up there with these is the standard reply that Christians and non-Christians alike give to the query, “How ya been?” More often than not I bet you’ve heard – or found yourself saying - “Oh, I’ve been busy.” Of all my personal peeves, this is the peeviest.

These days I wake up most mornings with absolutely nothing to do. I have no meetings to attend, no people to meet with, no messages to produce. I follow my whimsy. I lay in my bed and think, “What should I do today?” and then I think of something and say to myself, “That’s what I’m gonna do.” So on Monday, I worked in my garden and began to power wash the house because that’s what I wanted to do. On Tuesday, however, I read or scanned pictures into my hard drive and uploaded pictures to my Facebook account because that’s what I wanted to do. On Wednesday, I went hiking on the Ice Age Trail because that’s what I wanted to do. On Thursday…well, you get the idea. What with Linda and Christine working and Ed and Emma serving at Vacation Bible School, I’ve had my days pretty much to myself. And, frankly, it feels great and weird all at the same time. But one thing I am decidedly NOT these days is “busy” and I am content.

Last night at Wal-Mart I ran into a pastor-friend of mine and when I shared this with him, he laughed and said, “This might give you a taste of what retirement is all about.” But I wonder. Most retired people I know are busier – or seem to be busier – than most working people I associate with. Yes, they golf or fish or spend time with their grandkids, but so many of them are out of breath and not just because they are septua or octogenarians. Maybe it’s all a ruse to keep people like me usually on the look-out for volunteers at bay!

I recognize that this season I am in is unique and come September 1 (if not before) the pace of my life will pick-up if for no other reason that the new school year will commence. But if we all find “being busy” such the plague, how do we rid ourselves of the compulsion to “muchness and manyness”? Is it too much to state the obvious that we need to unplug more? Less TV, less internet, less I-Phone in exchange for what? In the Story of the Soils, Jesus spoke of a certain heart condition that due to the “worries about all the things they have to do and all the things they want to get” and is thereby strangled by the stress of it all so that nothing comes of it (Mark 4:19, Msg). I can’t help but think this is where a lot of us are at. Oh, the “kingdom plant” in our heart is hanging on but not growing, not thriving and certainly not producing fruit a hundred fold.

This is not new news. Others have stated this in many places before (think Charles Hummel’s booklet, The Tyranny of the Urgent). But if Jack Deere is right when he states that the essence of Christian maturity is “sharing his affections and discerning his voice,” than it should be priority to me to get in a place where I can hear him speak. I know this and have known it from way before this Sabbath rest began so maybe it’s not a matter of knowledge but of affection. I may miss my folks enough to call home every few weeks or so. But do I miss them enough to get in my car and drive down to Madison and spend the day with them especially now that time is definitely not a factor? I know how I’m supposed to answer that question but the truth is I have to think about that a bit. And maybe, in a similar way, this is the secret of why so many of us know we should spend more time with the Lord and do not has more to do with our lack of affection for him than our lack of devotion or discipline. Maybe the “muchness and manyness” of life has sapped us of the affections we should have toward God, our family and each other? Maybe, just maybe, this is what Jesus referred to as “the love of many growing cold” in the last days (Matt 24). It will grow this way because of “wickedness” (v. 12) which may mean that more wicked than the proliferation of immoral behavior, corporate greed, and political corruption in our society is the drivenness – the busyness – that many of us feel and act out of. It is straining the love of God out of us more than we know.