Is busy the norm for you these days? Do you feel like you are shirking your duties as spouse, parent, employee and volunteer if you are not busy from the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed? Does a long “to-do” list shape your day?
That seems to be the norm in our society. Everyone is busy and on the go. What happened to family suppers where there was time to talk through the events of the day and share stories? What happened to weekly Sunday dinners with friends, where the kids disappeared and played for hours while the adults chatted and played cards? What about Saturday mornings that were for sleeping in and then reading the paper over a cup of tea or coffee?
Instead, what I see are people driving faster, looking stressed, and trying to figure out how to fit one more thing into the day. I know how much I try to resist it in my own life – and it is not easy, since there is so much pressure to keep up the pace and to not let anything slide. The question for me as I enter this new year is this: “In the midst of all that I am doing, am doing what I want to be doing? Am I prioritizing what is really most precious to me?”
As I pondered that question, I came across a quote from Martin Luther (reformer, 1483-1546). He’s the reason we have the Protestant church because as a priest in the Catholic Church of his day, he stood up to what he saw as problems within the church. He was excommunicated by the church and condemned as an outlaw by the empire. Let’s just say, he was a busy man with lots that he needed to do, including trying to avoid being captured and executed. That’s why this quote from him jumped out at me: “I have so much to do today that I’m going to need to spend three hours in prayer in order to be able to get it all done.”
Doesn’t that turn everything in our society upside down? We tend to organize our lives the other way around, with quiet time, prayer time, hanging-out-as-a-family-with-nothing-to-do time, time for our children to rest and play and tell us their worries and fears – these “down” times being the last thing entered into our schedules, if there is time left. Yet we know that we need quiet time, we need adequate sleep, we need prayer and worship time, we need time to nurture our relationships. So what if those went into our schedules first?
Maybe we’re not going to start our days with 3 hours of prayer (though that does sound rather nice, especially if it includes a pot of tea), but what if we take Martin Luther’s way of prioritizing to heart? What if we looked at what is most precious in our lives and put that first? We know what Martin Luther’s priority was from his schedule – his relationship with God. What would our schedules look like if we organized them so that our first priorities really were our first priority? Take a few minutes and sit with your schedule. What does it tell about what is most important in your life?
It’s not easy in a society that is like a big steamroller pushing us to go faster and faster and do more and more, for no real purpose. But let’s start a new trend, in which prayer, quiet time, naps, family time, and exercise get scheduled in before anything else. We might even find ourselves praying for 3 hours on really busy days.
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