I once heard an analogy that described the things to which we cling in life as balls made out of glass or rubber. Some, it was said, you could drop and they would bounce away. Others would shatter when your grip loosened. The point was that to cling to Jesus, we sometimes need to let go of some things, things that we felt would destroy our lives if we dropped them.
As I’m writing this, it’s midterm season–crunch time. My to-do list is getting longer, not shorter. Empty slots on my calendar are becoming a scarce resource. My mind is constantly updating and checking a list of responsibilities, deadlines, and obligations.
In times like these, we often feel like we’re not just holding them. We’re juggling.
Is that what we want to be doing with the singular gift of our lives? Juggling?
The juggling takes a lot of energy, and a lot of attention, too. We might feel distant from God, and from other people. And then we hear a sermon, or maybe some advice from a mentor. “Slow down!” They say, extremely helpfully. “Get some rest!” The Lord, of course, tells us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.
Is it though? How can I rest at a time like this?
If these thoughts describe your life right now, I have some good news, and bad news.
The bad news is that this will not be the last time you feel busy. Busyness will follow you for the rest of your life. When I’m talking about busyness, I simply mean a measure of our level of responsibility, by the way. You will walk through seasons of life where you have a lot of stuff to do. That’s just a fact.
Here’s the good news, though: Being busy doesn’t have to prevent you from being attentive to God.
There is a warning, though. Busyness can make us vulnerable to preoccupation and distractedness. When we fall prey to these, we stop noticing God’s presence, and stop caring for God’s people. Those are the dangers of a busy life, but these dangers can be mitigated. You can be attentive to God even when you have a lot of stuff to do, and I want to help illustrate how you can do that.
Mary and Martha
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke:
Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. A woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her’ (Lk 10:38-42 ESV).
In this passage, there are two characters: Martha and Mary. Martha is a busybody, and a bossy woman. She’s ridiculing or scolding Mary for sitting around. And Mary, apparently, is to be admired because Jesus comments on the wisdom of her choice to sit at His feet. Martha was distracted with much serving, and Mary chose the good portion.
Let’s talk about Martha first. To put ourselves into her shoes, she really believed that to be a good host, there was this thing that needed to be done. The passage doesn’t actually tell us exactly what “serving” means, but typically, the story is told with the implication that it had something to do with the kitchen.
Regardless of the nature of the task, she was totally preoccupied with it. Martha’s task consumed her. She had tunnel vision. And it caused her to fail to be attentive to Christ. Clearly, whatever she was doing was not what was necessary at that moment. What I don’t want us to miss is that the work she’s doing is for Christ. Sometimes it’s hard to see the kingdom impact of our work. This is not one of those situations. On its face, she is literally serving Christ. Despite that, He took issue with her behavior. This is a perfect picture of the primary danger of busyness. She failed to notice him, even when he was right there in her living room.
The text also tells us that Mary chose the good portion. Other translations put it more simply; she made the right choice. In this passage, that good portion specifically refers to the blessings that came from being attentive to Christ’s words. She sat at His feet, listening to Him, depending on His word. That’s what Martha was missing. It isn’t that she was working. That, in and of itself, was not her mistake. Martha allowed her work to consume her. Mary, on the other hand, kept her ears open.
Daniel
Sometimes the things that are vying for our attention are a bit more serious than the quality of the meal that we’re serving. Take the example of Daniel. In Daniel 6, we read about Daniel, who’s this Hebrew in exile in Persian-occupied Babylon. He’s a high-ranking official with a close relationship with King Darius. He surely had a lot on his plate. Some other high-ranking officials were getting jealous of the power that Daniel was accumulating just because of his faithfulness and his skill and his trustworthiness. So they devised a plan where they would essentially make his thrice-daily habit of worship and prayer to God illegal.
And we can read in the book of Daniel his response to what happened:
When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had his windows in the upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he had done previously (Dan 6:10).
Isn’t that incredible? Daniel’s spiritual rhythms were so integrated into him that he continued to do them despite lethal political and legal threats.
Most of our situations are, praise be to God, a bit different from Daniel’s1. If you live in America, like I do, you do not live under the threat of violence if you openly worship God. Let’s not miss the clear similarity, though. There are things in our lives that compete for our attention. They can tend to draw our focus away from the Lord. Often, these competing concerns do feel insurmountable. How many of us have thought to ourselves, “Man, I would get more involved in my church, but I’m just too busy. I just have too much stuff on my plate right now.” And that’s fair. I’ve felt that way many times. But here’s the thing: that level of responsibility probably won’t go away.
Here’s the tough pill to swallow that we get from Daniel. At some point, we do have to prioritize. There are going to be things that compete for our time. Sure, we can be prudent about how we manage our schedules. Life, however, is not merely a productivity optimization problem.
Sometimes, life will present us with a choice. And then we’ll have to decide: when push comes to shove, who runs our lives? What matters most to us? And if it’s Christ, then it might be that we have to sacrifice some things to make that a reality.
I suspect that you probably struggle with this, dear reader, if your experience is even remotely like mine. I’ll be honest with you: I am chief among this host of sinners. My life is mostly a failure at attentiveness. I get preoccupied really easily. Ask anyone that knows me well, and they’ll tell you that when my mind gets fixated on something, I become almost exactly like Martha in that passage. Unfinished projects, philosophical musings, and previous conversations have a VIP lounge in my stream of consciousness. In other words, I have a hard time getting out of my head. It doesn’t help when you’re a high achiever who’s occasionally overcommitted and who barely functions while sleep deprived.
That being said, God’s been opening my eyes to a fundamental truth: I can’t just wait around for my calendar to clear up before I really try to be attentive to Him. I can’t use my level of responsibility as an excuse any longer. But there’s more:
You don’t have to nuke your calendar to find rest.
There is this way of living where we can be attentive to what God is doing in our lives, be sensitive to His presence, and be sensitive to the needs of others even in the midst of a busy schedule, a long to-do list, and a lot of people depending on us.
A Window Into The Mundane
I’m just going to give you a brief window into my life. Junior year, second semester of my undergrad degree was really hard, especially as a CS student. During that semester, I ate at the school cafeteria a lot because I had 19 meal swipes a week. There’s often not very many people in the caf for breakfast before 8 AM, and for that reason I found it restful. It was quiet. I’d get my eggs and my sausage links, and I’d sit at a table close to the windows where the sun shines through. One particular morning, as I sat there, eating, I was struck by how good and pleasant it felt for the sunshine to hit my skin. It was this warm embrace. And suddenly I was reminded of this verse in Psalm 34: that those who look on Him are radiant with joy. And then this other verse from Psalm 139: “You hem me in behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.” And in that moment, I could just feel the Lord’s presence, laying His hands on me, wrapping me in this embrace. I couldn’t help but smile. For a moment, I was at peace. Despite all the stuff that I had to do, God was there with me. I could always run to his arms and be at rest.
As I reflected on this experience later, it struck me as surprising that such a mundane moment generated such a spiritual experience. I’ve come to realize that my mind is constantly so preoccupied that I don’t even notice God’s presence during the ordinary moments of life. If I’m always thinking about what’s next–my to do list items, calendar events, internship applications, my 4 year plan–then I’m not going to notice him. If I’m stuck in the past–botched conversations, that test that I bombed, the mistakes I made yesterday–I’m not going to notice him. God’s not in the past or the future. You’re only going to notice his presence in the present!
I hope that these stories from scripture and my life have begun to paint a picture of the life that’s attentive to God when responsibilities mount. Let’s make this practical, though. How do we live like Mary and Daniel when we have a lot to do? How do we avoid the vulnerabilities of busyness that Martha, and so many of us today, fall prey to?
Practical Notes
Like Mary, we first must hang on Christ’s every word. For us today, this means that a daily diet of scripture is absolutely essential. Think about the story I told. A significant part of my experience of God’s presence was prompted by two Psalms that came to my mind. Your mind only generates spontaneous thoughts like that when you’re immersed in his word. I know this is something you hear a lot, but it always bears repeating.
Second, we must take time to listen. If we’re always active, even in the quiet moments of your life–like eating while alone, or in your car, for example–it’s hard to hear his voice. There are so many things that contribute to the internal noise of our minds. If that noise is too loud, we’ll forget he’s there. I suspect you know what I’m talking about. So take advantage of quiet moments. Don’t always fill them with noise. We’ll be surprised at the peace you can find when you sit quietly with your nothing but your thoughts from time to time.
Finally, cultivate reflective awareness. I started this practice in earnest at the start of this semester, and it has been extremely helpful to me. It’s what the Jesuits call “Examen.” To put it in simple terms, it is merely praying through your day. I use a simple pneumonic to remember this: Light Thanks Feelings Focus Future.
- Light: you ask God to illuminate your mind
- Thanks: you express gratitude for his blessings
- Feelings: you submit your feelings from the day to him
- Focus: you focus in on one feeling to examine in more detail
- Future: you pray about tomorrow.
That’s it. Light, Thanks, Feelings, Focus, Future.
What does this do? I’ve heard it described as looking in the rearview mirror of your life. That’s what it takes to drive a car safely, and that’s often what I’m missing when I’m constantly distracted. I’m letting my life slip by unnoticed. Looking backwards gives me perspective. I have a chance to notice when I’m getting preoccupied, and recenter my focus on him.
So to conclude: a life of attentiveness to God is characterized by a deep dependence on His word, and it’s rooted in a daily rhythm of prayer, no matter your schedule. It’s a life lived in the present, unshackled by preoccupations—not because your responsibilities don’t matter, but because Christ matters more. It’s not about nuking your calendar; it’s about keeping an eye out for Him, and an ear open.
I will leave you with a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins called God’s Grandeur. It’s one of my favorites, and it beautifully articulates the wonder of the world in which we live–wonder which many times we fail to notice.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.2
Don’t your life pass you by. In the midst of the mundane and the everyday, you’ll find God’s grandeur flaming out, shining, gathering, if you only keep an eye out and pay attention.
AMGD
Footnotes
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I’ll admit I’m mostly speaking for myself here, but if you’re reading my blog, chances are this applies to you. ↩