Pride in my Busyness
Daughter. Friend. Girlfriend. 3 sport athlete at school. Club sports team athlete. Member of the honor roll. National Honors Society member. Co-worker at two different jobs.
Daughter. Friend. Fiancé. 2 sport athlete. Member of Student Senate. Teacher’s Assistant. Tutor. Co-worker at two different jobs.
Wife. Daughter. Friend. Full-time teacher. Coach for two sport seasons. Leader of a mission trip.
Wife. Mother. Daughter. Friend. Preschool Director. Volunteer.
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These have all been my roles at various points in time during high school, college, and my career.
What do your lists look like?
Maybe a better question is: How many times per day do you find yourself saying, “I’m just so busy!”
We all do, don’t we? Even if our list of roles is short, I believe that no matter what, we find ourselves wrapped up in the worldly scheme of busyness.
Is it a sin to be busy? Certainly not. Everything we do, we do for the glory of God. But sin comes into play when our goal isn’t glorifying God anymore. Sin comes into play when we entangle ourselves in our to-do lists and find our pride and purpose in everything we get done, everything we do throughout the week.
Maybe you’re a checklist kind of person, or maybe you’re like me and you write things down on mental sticky notes that never seem to actually stick where you thought you left them. Either way, when we complete a whole baker’s dozen of things in the day, it feels pretty good, doesn’t it?
God has been so good to us and given us all so many different skills and talents to fulfill the many roles we play in life. At the end of your checklist do you make sure to add one final to-do: “Thank God for all He’s done.”?
For some reason that mental sticky note of mine always seems to get blown away into the space next to my brain and gets replaced with “Give yourself a high-five for completing all that!”
We live in a world of go, go, go; of do some and then do some more; of ‘if you’re not 5 minutes early then you’re late’; of immediate responses via text or email, of constant work! People “Ooh” and “Ah” at everything you can get done, of promotions you rack up at work, of all the children you take care of at home while keeping an immaculate household, of the records you break on the sports team, of the grades you keep while juggling three jobs to make it through school.
Wanna know what God “Oohs” and “Ahs” at? Let’s look at a few verses from Haggai.
Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes. “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build my house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.
(Haggai 1:5-9)
A little context for you: The Isrealites were being scolded by Haggai, the prophet of God, because, well, they were keeping up their own houses quite spectacularly while they simply left God’s temple in shambles.
I love how God starts out here: “Consider your ways.” Just consider them. Sit and ponder over them. I think when they did, they realized that God had been so incredibly good to them, as he has been to you as well. He brought them out of captivity; fed them in the wilderness, empowered them to take the Promised Land of Canaan and continued showering blessings upon them day in and day out. And how did they respond?
Quite like we respond today.
They continued on doing what was best for themselves… but they were never satisfied. So it is with you and me. When we find our purpose and our pride in the things WE have done, we will always come up short.
So God continues on: “Go up to the hills and bring wood and build my house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord” (v 8).
God had been so good to His people, and in those times the Mosaic Law was still in place because the Savior had not yet come, so as a way to look forward to the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus would make, the Israelites were to make sacrifices to God in His temple… but they had left His temple in ruins, and they had not done what God had asked them to do.
God has been so good to us as well. I am quite certain that your list of blessings could be far longer than your list of to-dos at the moment. We don’t have any Mosaic Law to follow, because we live in the times of the New Testament Covenant of Grace. But God has given us many instructions in these times: to honor Him above all else, to give glory to His name, to tell others of Him, to grow in the knowledge of our Lord, to be in His word and reflect it in our lives.
I’ve had a couple separate conversations with some friends of mine lately about busyness. They each came up quite organically, but centered around the same fact. When our busyness in this life halts, when it’s put on pause, we begin to feel empty. We struggle to find our purpose. We feel alone, unnecessary, even weak.
I think that’s because for so long in our lives we’ve found our pride in what WE can accomplish instead of what HE has already accomplished.
God’s to-do list was set before Him at the very beginning, in that Garden with the first two humans to walk on this earth & with a serpent, better known as Satan. This was it:
“‘And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’” (Genesis 3:15)
I would have loved to have been there when God said those words to the Devil. But I would have loved to be there even more when Jesus descended into Hell to say, “Check! Done. To-do list complete!” Can you imagine the victory dance? Many people think that when Jesus descended into Hell it was part of his humiliation, for him to continue suffering. But it was the exact opposite! Jesus descended into Hell to publicly declare his victory over sin, death, and Satan - to cancel your reservation once and for all. Check. Done. To-do list complete.
So consider your ways. When you begin to feel unsatisfied, when you begin to only and always do what is best for yourself, remember who brings you blessing and reward. It’s God! And in Him, we find our purpose. In Him, we find example after example of how richly he has given to us. In Him, we find someone who was humble to save. In Him, we find someone who is proud to call us his own.
So whether you faithfully write down your to-do lists each day or if you simply tack up those mental sticky notes, never forget to remember that God’s to-do list was completed long ago, just for you, so that you may never doubt your purpose in this life.