Generally we all find that life is busy, life is stressful and at times it is almost overwhelming. While what it means for everyone to be busy may be different, once thing is certain, it is a very common experience. We gaze at the ads for holidays and dream of an uncomplicated easy break, we endlessly look forward to weekends, but there is little reprieve. Weekends and holidays pass almost faster than they come and we are left with a sinking emptiness that seems to bite us in the quieter moments.
I would like to suggest that one of the reasons that this is the case is that we are lazy. Not that we are doing nothing but that we fail to take the initiative to control our own lives. Before you think that I have an answer to this problem, please realise I speak not as someone who has mastered this by any means, but as one who is constantly a victim of it. Unfortunately there is no magic bullet for this one, only hard fought, prayerful, soul searching and gradual change with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Busyness now forms part of the very fabric of our culture. Part of this has to do with a degree of ‘choice overload’, and some of it is down to the way that we have learned to live as a society. By ‘choice-overload’ I mean that it is now possible to spend more time than we physically have simply deciding what we will buy or do next. The sheer range of options available is so enormous that we can barely weigh up the decisions before us each day. Rather than enjoying the choices we do make so often we are drawn to the next pressing choice. Choice in itself can be a good thing, but when the making of trivial choices becomes focus of our lives I believe it is quite unhelpful. We need something bigger than ourselves. When the biggest thing in our lives is ourselves we are left paying homage to the God of self. When we know that God is real and He calls us to live for something bigger than ourselves in Jesus it can be incredibly liberating.
When it comes to our society as a whole, it would be easy to lay the blame outside of ourselves, but it is also very much part of our choices. Each person is free to make choices about what they do to some extent. It is our choices that end up restricting our lives in different ways.
One of the more surprising things today is that many people do not feel free to say ‘no’. Unless we have a reason that we are unable to say ‘yes’ we feel obligated to take hold of whatever good things come our way. This in itself becomes a form of slavery. Do we feel that we are able to decide what we will do and what we will not do anymore? Can we work out our priorities in life and live for them? Are we caught on the treadmill, barely having time to work out which brand of toothpaste will be the most suitable for our dental health and image? This is a paradox of western society, so much choice but with it an impotence to make the choices that matter.
What can we do? Taking time out for reflection and planning concrete action is helpful, but unless we find our identity, purpose and meaning outside of ourselves we have little hope of maintaining it. The way out of our slavery to choice is found in the good news of Jesus Christ. As Paul says in his frustration,
‘What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (Rom 7:24-25)
