I heard a sermon Sunday on the subject of service both to and for the church. One of the applications the pastor gave in his sermon was that we need to create margin in our lives for service. His premise was that his congregation had very little time to give to service because their lives were fully committed elsewhere. Of course, this isn’t a phenomenon unique to this church or even to this area. Busyness is the norm for most of us, whether we claim the name of Christ or not. It seems being American is synonymous with being busy. In fact, there is a certain pride that comes with being busy. If you’re too busy for something, it communicates that you’re important. Olds and Schwartz in their book, The Lonely American, discovered that people wear their busyness as “a badge of toughness, success and importance.”

But the downside to our busyness isn’t just that we don’t have time for service, we also don’t have time for relationships. Our busyness leaves little room for us to deepen or cultivate new relationships. It’s no wonder that our busyness leaves us feeling alone and somewhat isolated. We lament the lack of time for those relationships but generally nothing changes. The awful truth is that we love our busyness. But why? Why do we need to stay busy? There are myriad reasons but they all coalesce into one…our idolatrous hearts. We have used busyness as a functional savior and we look to our busyness to “save us” from our fear of rejection and failure and our sense of self-importance. But as with any savior other than Christ, we are disappointed because our busyness doesn’t save us from our fears, but it enslaves us to our fears, so that we continue on in our busyness until we burn out. The only savior that is powerful enough to deliver us from the fears and pride that produce busyness is the grace of Christ. In the gospel of grace, our fears are vanquished because in the cross we see that Jesus has made us acceptable to the Father. We experience His delight in us so that our identity is no longer defined by our fears but by our Father.