Monday, January 12, 2015

Why does Busy-ness most often win?


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Why does Busy-ness most often win?
       
Monday, January 12, 2015
Jeff Lampl


“Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit
if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.”
 John 15:4 (NLT)

 

*Why is it that so many of us hate “slow” when God appear to delight in it?  Eugene Peterson offers us at least two reasons:  

I am busy because I am vain.  I want to appear important.  Significant.  What better way than to be busy?  The incredible hours, the crowded schedule, and the heavy demands of my time are proof to myself – and to all who will notice – that I am important.  If I go into a doctor’s office and find there’s no one waiting, and I see through a half-open door the doctor reading a book, I wonder if he’s any good. . . .  

Such experiences affect me.  I live in a society in which crowded schedules and harassed conditions are evidence of importance, so I develop a crowded schedule and harassed conditions.  When others notice, they acknowledge my significance, and my vanity is fed.

I am busy because I am lazy
.  I indolently let others decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself.  It was a favorite theme of C.S. Lewis that only lazy people work hard.  By lazily abdicating the essential work of deciding and directing, establishing values and setting goals, other people do it for us.  

*Excerpted from “Day by Day”


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