Things!

I spent the weekend getting caught up on older blog posts (actually I did other things, too, but that is another story). Here is a post that really caught my eye:

. . .We did not have time to stop and ask if this is truly what God wants from us, because we were so busy doing things.

We were so busy doing things...

And, that's just what they were... things. This is what I realized this morning while I was talking with my wife. We had been so busy doing things for so long that we had almost forgotten that God is not interesting in things. God is interested in us and other people... relationships.

Don't misunderstand me... I don't think these things were designed as things. But, they became things. Things to do. Things to prepare. Things to instruct. Things to follow. Things to believe. Things to support. Things to finance. Things...

We should teach other believers... but teaching can become a thing. We should preach the gospel... but preaching can become a thing. We should meet with other believers... but Sunday morning events (and Saturday evenings spent with friends) can become a thing.

Even quiet times... devotional times... prayer times... can become things. And things are not God.

<idle musing>
Martha and Mary in the Gospel of John. We live in a Martha centric society. Do this, do that, here’s the latest deadline, don’t miss it or you’re in trouble. Activity, everywhere you look. If you take time to stop and meditate, you feel guilty for not producing.

But how much of the activity is just hiding the emptiness inside? How much of the activity is a subtle form of works righteousness? How much of the activity is to keep us from confronting who we really are? If we just stay busy, we can collapse at the end of it and feel like we “did something,” thus keeping the conscience quiet.

A whirlwind of activity, but what is at the center of it? Self! And what does Christ call us to except death to self! As usual, we get it backwards. Christ calls us to die, that we might truly live. So we work like crazy, thinking we can truly find life that way. Ah, the folly of our ways. Genesis 3 permeates everything we do, think, and see. Would that we were to allow Romans 8 to have the same reign in our lives! What a transformation the world would see. Would that I John’s perfect love of God and neighbor were allowed to control our thoughts and actions. We would rapidly recover the reputation that the early church had among their neighbors! Instead we devise clever programs for “reaching the lost.” Things!
</idle musing>