The Heaviness of Busyness Eased by Prayer and Connection

Sorry. It's been awhile since I've taken the time to write anything personally on this blog. I don't really know if its writers block or the fact that I have felt unmotivated to write anything lately. It could have a lot to do with busyness. I read an article quite a while back - sometime in the 1990's, I think. It was in The Door magazine, which was once called The Wittenburg Door back in the day. The article was entitled, "Busyness is a Sin." I'm finding this out the hard way - by continual being busy. Yes, I work, and work has its own busyness. But, within that, the urgent continually gets in the way of the important. Maybe that's where the sin comes in. We often get distracted by the urgent in other people's lives, which demands time from our own when we genuinely care and want to be connected to others and see them succeed or to try and meet their spiritual or other needs. Or, urgent things in our own lives come up that strip away our time and attention to things that are important to developing and planning for the future.

This past Sunday, as we offered an extended time of prayer in one of our worship services at church, I felt the heaviness of busyness. Worship, in some ways, has felt like just one more thing I have to do. I felt the need to offer this extended time in prayer as a call to our congregation to be a people of prayer - not just a people who do stuff. An inordinate amount of time goes into just showing up for activities and programs so we can feel like something's going on. It seems, in this culture, it takes a lot of effort for people to be quiet, listen, pray, reflect, and genuinely prepare for the future. It can be overwhelming - the amount of activity we have to keep up. So, as I am feeling my own need for extended prayer and reflection I encouraged people to come around the chancel to pray while some ambient music played softly in the background. I suggested to them that maybe someone out there needed someone to pray with them and that they could seek out our Interim Pastor or myself or a friend and just come together and pray and connect with God and one another as well as to be in prayer for certain groups in our church.

After inviting the congregation into this time of prayer, I walked off to the side and knelt behind a column at the front of the church - expecting to be out of sight. However, my attempt at invisibility was not to play out as I had hoped. After a minute or so in prayer I felt someone slip up behind me and kneel down, placing her hand on my shoulder. Then she began to pray in a whispered voice for me. For me. This is the first time I remember, in the 13 plus years I have been at the church, that anyone has just come up to me and just prayed for me in such a personal, affirming, and uplifting way. She prayed for me to have a vision for the future. She prayed that I would feel confident in God's call wherever that took me. She prayed that I would have the energy I needed to accomplish what was before me. She affirmed me for who I was and what God might be doing in and through my life. For the first time in these many months, even years, I felt the heaviness of busyness lifted off my shoulders and a renewed sense of meaning and purpose creeping its way back into my spirit. All it took was the genuine, heartfelt prayer of a former youth group member, now gone off to college who had returned for a weekend visit. The Holy Spirit must have drawn her out of her pew that morning just for me. Just a couple of minutes of prayer and connection can make all the difference.

Will busyness invade my life again? Yes, of course it will. I'm not so naive to believe it's done for in my life. I will continually need those moments of prayer and connection, both in solitude with God and in connection with others, in order to keep busyness in check and move forward into God's future. Because of this young lady's prayer for me, I feel more confident about that now - not because it's anything I can control, but because it's something for which I have hope.

Thanks ER! You have blessed me beyond what you'll ever know.