We here in the San Francisco Bay Area suffer from a disease called busy. The land of hour plus commutes, wall-to-wall weekends, work weeks going into the triple digit hours, constant web surfing on your iPhone/Blackberry/Droid/Palm – you know what I mean. I got to thinking about this on my morning bus ride while reading The Contemplative Pastor by Eugene Peterson, specifically in chapter two, entitled “The Unbusy Pastor.” His main point there is that a pastor can get so caught up in the busy, filling time with all sorts of seemingly meaningful tasks while missing the whole point altogether. At one point, he makes this striking suggestion as to the cause of the busy-ness: “I am busy because I am vain. I want to appear important. Significant.”*
And I think that’s true not only for “pastor-types,” but of all sorts of types here with the frenetic pace of life we lead. We were talking about it for a little bit tonight, and I thought, could our inclination toward busy-ness be a byproduct of having so many choices? The Bay Area affords us so many opportunities for finding the perfect job, the right neighborhood to live in, the grocery store with the best options (from our place can walk to Safeway, Trader Joe’s, Smart & Final, and a whole host of Chinese supermarkets), public school or private school, day care, parks, cell phone plans, computers, whatever. But I wonder with all of that choice, we get saddled with a paralyzing busy-ness that Satan wants us to get all caught up in and distracted. The gospel tells us something else, that we’re not to get swept up in all these different things to the point they take our focus away from what really matters, loving God and loving people.
This week is Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, who in Himself brings good news that is of lasting significance, not just the appearance of it. Let’s not forget that in the midst of this season.
*Eugene H. Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor : Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Waco: Word Books, 1989), 27.
