Significance: About Being Busy

What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun?

Ecclesiastes 2:22

It was one of the busy times. The phone rang off the hook. Everybody wanted to talk to Chuck. On one hand, it was immensely frustrating, but at the same time, it made him feel vital and needed. Although his stress level shot up, the busyness gave him a feeling of importance.

The longing we each have to feel significant is a beguiling, hard-to-understand but very real need. When we are wanted or needed by others, we feel this need is being met. Often, however, we become busy but don’t actually do anything very significant. We can become busy and feel good about ourselves, but our busyness may not contribute very much to forever.

Value Versus Velocity

The trap of busyness is that we tend to equate the value of our labor with the velocity of our labor—how busy we are. In truth, busyness does not lead to significance, but to self-importance.

Busy people become puffed up with themselves. They feel important because so many people want to speak with them. In reality, very few of these people care about you as a person. They will not cry at your funeral. They will not help you when your fortunes change. They will eat your food and drink your wine, but they will soon forget your name.

Labor which God our Father approves is born in your private watch before Christ. It is not puffed up in self-importance. It does not seek to be busy to feel important, it seeks to be busy for the glory of God.

The only significant work is preassigned by the Father. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10, emphasis added). We must kneel at the cross and patiently wait for God to reveal His important work. This kind of watch leads a man to a measured sort of labor—a considered, controlled form of busyness that leads to a destiny of true significance.

Impatience

Most people do not wait. They rush headlong into worthwhile but self-made works. Most people, impatient to find true significance, become busy. In practice, they become self-important. Busyness is a curse of the devil. So what do busy people receive for all their toil and striving? "All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest" (Ecclesiastes 2:23).

When you start to get busy: Stop. Ask yourself: “Does this busyness flow from the work God has revealed to me? Or am I merely busy, searching impatiently for strokes to make me feel good about myself?” The one who searches for strokes has received his reward in full.

The Reward of Patience

The person who slows down to hear the whisper of the Holy Spirit will labor in significance. The world may not recognize the importance of his good works, but the Spirit will testify with his spirit that it is the work God prepared in advance for him to do. “To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness” (Ecclesiastes 2:26).

I SURRENDER

My Father, I confess that I have often been more interested in feeling good about myself than in knowing Your will. I have been consumed in busyness, and I have not been still before You. I have created a world of self-importance, but I am not doing enough that is truly significant—things that will last forever. I surrender my busyness to You, Lord. Reveal to me that good work which You prepared in advance for me to do. And I will wait patiently for it—for months, even years, if that is Your desire. Amen.