What’s Making You Busy?

What’s Making You Busy?

Be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.

Ephesians 5:15-17

Physician Larry Dossey coined the term “time sickness” in 1982 to describe the obsessive belief that “time is getting away, that there isn’t enough of it, and that you must pedal faster and faster to keep up.”^aBy that definition, we’re almost all time sick. Who among us isn’t busy and in a rush?

When we were first married and living in Pasadena, we attended the same church as Dr. James Dobson. One Sunday morning he made a guest appearance in our newlywed class, and in the context of his lesson, he said something that got the full attention of every neophyte in the room: “Overcommitment and exhaustion are the most insidious and pervasive marriage killers you will ever encounter as a couple.” We’ve never forgotten that. In fact, we’ve been working at guarding against busyness ever since. Once you realize the potential harm busyness can have on your marriage, you become more conscious of how much or how little time you have together each day.

No matter how much time stealing, time stretching, and time bending we attempt, we always find ourselves up against a certain mathematical law: Thirty-two hours’ worth of tasks can’t be crammed into a twenty-four-hour day. So we are busy. Nobody’s disputing that fact.

The real question is, How busy are you? We take that back. The real question—the one upon which this chapter hinges—is, What are you busy doing?^b

When the fire of prayer goes out, the barrenness of busyness takes over.

—George Carey

^a 151

^b 152