And so the question is asked when running into Lucy at stop 3 on the way to stop 4, "Hey, how have you been?" And, of course, your response is... "Busy."
Is it Tuesday or Wednesday? Saturday! Seriously? Where did the week go!? Because this needed to get done and they needed to quickly be driven there, and groceries, the bank, then dropping her off and picking him up, and laundry, dishes, checking email, quick changing the Facebook status to "Laundry, AHH!" and what am I going to do for dinner because, "I don't have time..."
I'm breaking the law of busyness in order to read the Law, so that I can breathe. Because restoration and renewal are critical to choosing life, not death.
The Bible has gotten a bad rap, and the word Law has as well, largely because the two are often knit together, but with the wrong thread. God gave the Law (Torah), and we roll our eyes as our minds hear tinfoil being ripped at the very word 'Law.' But when the Hebrew people received the Law (Torah) from God, they were coming out of 400 years of slavery where they did the same thing over and over and over again. Every day was the same. Every single day, so that Monday was the same as Thursday, and "it's Saturday! Really?" So after God rescued them from that way of life, He needed to teach them and guide them to a new way of life, true life. Enter the Law, the life giving Torah. The Law wasn't originally experienced as death but life. It was a brand new day and a brand new way of life.
I need that too. So it's critical that I spend my waking up with the Law, or maybe it's more helpful to say, the Word. Prayer, immersing myself in the Scriptures and pausing to just be. I need to be interrupted from the race, the go-go mentality that is so common and so pervasive in our society. I just need to be and to be with the Word.
Psalm 19:8, "The Torah of Adonai is perfect, restoring the inner person." (CJB)
That is restoring the soul, being put back together. Or having life breathed into us. I need that every day. So I am breaking the law of busyness to sit and spend time reading the Law because it reminds me to breath, or that I am breathing. Before the Word can take on flesh through me it has to be inhaled by me. Because busyness is calling, screaming in fact, and I often have to be rescued from it by God. Maybe you do too?
Start with a Psalm, a Proverb or the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Because breaking the law of busyness is critical to breathing and breathing is critical to living, truly living. And I think we all want that, right?
