Busy

{Our blog today comes from local businessman and music pastor Michael Smith who knows busyness firsthand!}

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

-        Leisure, William Henry Davies

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside still waters,

He restores my soul…

-        Psalm 23

Busy. The word itself sounds like bees, ever-buzzing, ever-toiling in the bustling hive. 

Bizz-ee.  Say it out loud. It’s obnoxious. As if it’s trying to warn us, “I’m unpleasant. I’m dangerous. Stay away.”

Busy. It’s a tricky word.  Sneaky.  It creeps into our lives and convinces us it’s a badge of honor.  I have a lot to do. I’m ambitious. I’m productive. I’m in demand. I’m important. 

I’m taking care of business.  Bizz-ness.  Bizz-ee-ness.

I’ve spent my career working in tech.  It’s an exciting industry, always changing, always creating.  Always busy.  Every tech company thinks they’re changing the world, and honestly, in aggregate they are.  Digital technology has transformed everything: how we work, how we relax, how we cook, how we exercise, how we connect.  We have more capacity for efficiency and convenience than ever before.  We can automate almost anything, and what we can’t automate we can microwave, and what we can’t microwave we can outsource to AI.

And yet, I’ve never felt busier.

I started a new job earlier this year.  It’s a big role, leading a global team, managing a large business.  I knew it would be a lot of work, but I’ve been continually surprised at how overwhelmed I feel most days.  My days usually start at 6:30 or 7 a.m. and consist of 4, 5, 6 hours of non-stop meetings.  Then I start my actual work. 

I have an executive coach who meets with me every few weeks to talk about strategies for managing everything.  Productivity hacks.  Frameworks for faster decision-making.  Tools for maximizing efficiency so I can get everything done.  I’m learning a lot, and I’m grateful for the investment.

But he doesn’t ask me about my soul.  We don’t talk about my family.  We don’t talk about prayer, or renewal, or rest.  Because that’s not my job.

So the challenge for me this summer has been to find space.  Space for my family, space for my soul, space for prayer, space for God.

Eugene Peterson has been a great help recently.  In his book “The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction”, he challenges pastors and church leaders to resist the pressure to operate as CEOs and overworked managers, and to embrace the quiet, unbusy, subversive practices of prayer, scripture, and recognizing the presence of God.

“The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it.”

“I can’t be busy and pray at the same time. I can be active and pray; I can work and pray; but I cannot be busy and pray. I cannot be inwardly rushed, distracted, or dispersed. In order to pray I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; to God than to my clamoring ego. Usually, for that to happen there must be a deliberate withdrawal from the noise of the day, a disciplined detachment from the insatiable self.”

Peterson points out that it is impossible to lay down in green pastures, to rest by still waters, if I am perpetually busy.

Now I need to clarify one thing.  If I stopped here, you might think work is the problem, time away from work is the solution, and the sooner we all retire the sooner we can finally experience God’s presence. 

But what of the biblical warnings against idleness (go to the ant, you sluggard), and the countless admonitions to work?  How does work, well, work with God’s presence?  Paul says that in his work, he “toiled, struggling with all [God’s] energy that he powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29).  Peter tells us “[Let] whoever serves, serve with the strength that God provides” (1 Pet 4:11).

For me, this summer is a time of working out the reality that God is present and working in every moment, but busyness tricks me into believing it’s all on me.  So my job is to grab any spare moment to remember, to practice, His presence.

So what does that look like?  It looks like a Tuesday morning.  I’ve just opened my laptop and I hear the dings of emails arriving.  I have a full slate of meetings, a brain full of stress, and a cup without coffee.  I walk to the kitchen and start the water boiling - and I have five minutes.  Five minutes to remember that I am not alone.  That even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Zoom calls, God is with me.

So while the water heats, I sit.  Maybe I close my eyes and recite the 23rd Psalm.  Maybe I grab my bible and open to whatever passage I’ve been reading recently.  Maybe I speak, maybe I listen. But I’m snatching this moment to remember God is here.