Too Busy. Too Drained.

Taking a step back can be good. You can gain a new perspective, return to what is truly important, refresh your soul with rivers of life, and remember what the focus of life is. I’m amazed at how easily we fall into lop-sided patterns, make weak excuses into mountains, and believe lies.

The other day, one of my friends sent me a Facebook message. It held a desperate call to hang out…and was soaked with words of loneliness. Of course, I rose to the occasion to accomplish a great deed and promised to spend time with her once I returned home from my trip.

But wasn’t that a mirror image of an exact promise I had made two months ago…to the same person? And I never acted on it.

What have I become? I know in my heart this isn’t the only vow I have not upheld. I hide behind what I must do now: work, earn a living, do my schoolwork, throw ingredients together for meals, clean –the list doesn’t really end in my head. I am drained when I come home from work, think I. I am no use to those who call to me, to those I love who are miles away… My cup is used up and empty; I have no more to offer.

Or so I think.

There is most certainly a place to draw lines, create boundaries, recognize your limitations, flee over-commitment, choose your battles, spend quality quiet time with the Lord, and focus on the tasks of a particular season in life. But I cannot afford to ignore the people clearly places in my life along the journey.

 I Timothy 5 makes this idea clear. In that chapter, Paul talks about the treatment of widows by the church. While he encouraged the church to take care of them, he called families to take care of their own first and foremost: “But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God” (v.4).  What am I doing for my family in the midst of my draining business? How am I still touching their lives even though they are miles away? Am I using their distance as an excuse?

Paul continues his discussion with a description of the legacy of a godly widow: she “is well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the Lord’s people, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds” (v. 10). My friend should have never have NEEDED to beg me to hang out. I should have never assumed she had made friends, that she was fitting in, and that she was blossoming in her new season of life. I should have taken the initiative.

Perhaps I try to fit being a genuinely caring family member and friend into a box of good deeds, something to check off my list of being a “good Christian,” instead of viewing and valuing it as a lifestyle. Oswald Chambers so poignantly stated, “the secret of a Christian’s life is that the supernatural becomes natural…the experience of this becomes evident in the practical, every day details of life, not in times of intimate fellowship with God.” Special moments with God are invigorating, give us strength, replace the draining business with purpose and joy; but they should not be the only evidence of a Christian walk –they should only be the Source. I am renewed to BEAR FRUIT.