The consequences of being too busy

By Robert Hurtgen

Everybody I know is busy. Parents frantically rush their kids back and forth from activity to activity. Even the retired guys I know say they are busier than they want to be.

We live in this tremendous tension where our desires for a full life are completely overwhelmed by the activity of pursuing it. Worse, we've come to believe if we are not busy, we are somehow failing.

There is a very odd story found in 1 Kings 20:35-43 in the Bible.

The verses tell of a prophet who asked a man to wound him as part of a plot.

Wounded, he covers his eyes with a bandage, waiting for the king. When the king comes by, the prophet tells him in battle, a man brought him a prisoner he was told to guard, saying his life is the consequence if he goes missing.

The prophet confesses, "And your servant was busy here and there, he was gone." The prisoner slipped away.

The king tells the man his life will be the price of the lost prisoner. That is when the prophet reveals himself.

The drama was put in place to cause the king to realize he had been the one busy here and there. The king's business caused him to neglect his kingship responsibilities.

There are two main principles from this strange account.

First, the king did not have any trouble believing that this wounded man could get so busy, the one thing he had to do was neglected.

We have no trouble believing it, either. We know how problematic business can be in other people's lives.

Not our lives, but theirs. We are too smart to be that distracted.

Like the king, we fail to realize how prone to distraction our own business causes us to be.

Second, business has real-world consequences. The king neglected his primary responsibility, and the entire nation suffered. He was too busy.

One reason we stay busy is we don't think there are any consequences to our business.

Every time you say "yes" to one thing, you have said "no" to something else.

Time is the only non-renewable resource we have. When it is gone, it is gone.

It's time to reject business. It's time to embrace slowing.

It's time to be OK not being able to be all things to all people.

It's time to kill business before business kills you.