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Busy. I wonder what the number would come to if all of us added up how many times we have said that word lately. I’m guessing it would be a very large number.

If we aren’t careful, the word busy becomes part of a complaint about all the things we have to do. Maybe that isn’t one of your temptations, but it is certainly one of mine.

When I’m thinking straight, I realize that all that busyness is actually the compilation of all of the choices I have made to do things with and for people I care deeply about.

This family reunion photo of the family of photographer Carol Highsmith illustrates one family’s many blessings.

Photographer Carol M. Highsmith’s family reunion at the log cabins where her grandfather and great grandfather were born. Courtesy: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

I’m learning to see my busyness as evidence of God’s blessings rather than a source for aggravation. God gave me a powerful reminder of that this week when I saw a man sitting on a makeshift cushion on a concrete step behind a public building. He was trim, neat, and nice-looking. He appeared to be healthy and without physical disability. While I was fulfilling one of my busy activities of the week, I saw him again and again over the course of two or three hours. He sat erect, facing the same direction on his backless cushion.

When I returned for another session of my own busyness at the same location the next morning, he was there again on the same spot, on the same make-shirt cushion facing the same way. A friend shared his story with me. Christians have tried to help him, but this man has not been able to get past whatever it is that holds him back.

While you and I run around completing our list of responsibilities, he sits on the same spot, looking in the same direction. I am grateful for the different “spots” I need to be and the many “directions” I face as I go about my daily life.

I once heard a missionary say that the things we complain about are really our blessings:

Oh, no. I have to call a plumber!

Oh, dear. We need to stop and get gas.

Oh, me. It’s time to fix dinner.

Plumbing, cars that need gas, and food that needs cooking for people we love. Burdens or blessings? The answer is in our perspective.

Whatever you do in word or deed,
do all in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks through Him to God the Father.
Colossians 3:17

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2 Comments

  1. WOW!!! I was going to skip this reading today because I am SO BUSY! I COMPLAIN ALL the time about what I have to get done. I get very stressed. I am an older Mom (56) with 3 young sons still at home. I often complain about not having a girl to help me in the house like other younger moms do. I PRAYED for more children for 15 years (between our 5th & 6th children). God BLESSED us with 3 more sons!
    Then you brought to my attention that this busyness is for the people I love. What a perspective! God is SO good. Now I need to make sure that my busyness is the right busyness. 🙂
    Thank you for sharing the Word of God and lessons we can learn from it.

  2. I love how God works! I was just saying this to my husband last night when water was pouring into a utility room in our basement (and going out the bottom of the wall thankfully) from all the ran we have had. I told him I was grateful we have this nice house that we could call a plumber to fix and that we had the money to pay him. And then this comes to my email this morning. ????

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