The Busy Life

We live in a world and society where patience is a forgotten virtue. We have instant, 24-hour access to everything we want or need. Everything is “on-the-go.” We have become lovers and pursuers of money.

Cell phones are ringing constantly, email messages pop up, text messages are flooding in, Twitter and Facebook talks to us all day and we can watch 6 football games at the same time.

In a world with this many distractions, this much noise, it is no wonder we find it hard to pray.

Photo Credit: groucho (Creative Commons)

If you’re like me, even when you set aside 15 or 30 minutes to pray, you quickly find out that it’s actually quite difficult to pray. After a few minutes, your mind starts to wander, you can’t remember if you called so-and-so back, your entire day of to-do’s become overwhelming and next thing you know, those 15 or 30 minutes are up and you never actually got around to the praying.

It’s easy for this kind of “prayer” to become a never-ending cycle. It felt OK at first, because hey, we’re all busy and God understands, right? But then a few weeks goes by, and a few months, and that’s when the guilt sets in. We know we’re supposed to be spending time with God daily, but we really aren’t. We continue to dodge the issue and busy ourselves further hoping that God won’t notice. But he does.

If any of this sounds a little familiar to you, be encouraged. We don’t need to be “spiritual” or have it all together in order to receive love and approval from Jesus. In fact, how Christ feels about us is so contrary to that. He loves us just as we are and wants us to come to him regardless of how we feel or how long it’s been since we last spent time with him.

In his book A Praying Life, Paul E. Miller says this:

“The difficulty of coming just as we are is that we are messy. And prayer makes it worse. When we slow down to pray, we are immediately confronted with how unspiritual we are, with how difficult it is to concentrate on God.” He goes on to say, “God cheers when we come to him with our wobbling, unsteady prayers. Jesus does not say, ‘Come to me, all you who have learned how to concentrate in prayer, whose minds no longer wander, and I will give you rest.’ No, Jesus opens his arms to his needy children and says, ‘Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest’ (Matthew 11:28, NASB). Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.”

Be encouraged today. We all live The Busy Life. But in spite of that busy life, let us choose to come to Christ just as we are, distracted and messy, and allow Him to shape us into who He’s called us to be.