Busyness is a DistractionSample

What Do I Value?

In one way, busyness reveals what we think is needed for our lives. In another way, busyness reveals what we value as well. 

Many of us live in societies that tell us what to value. In America, there’s the standard “American Dream” with the perfect family, the big house, the white picket fence, and the nice car. In other ways, we might put our value in how we look, how much money we have, how successful we are, etcetera.

What we value often creates our busyness.

If we value these things, we become busy, but not for the right things.

When Paul writes a letter to Timothy in the Bible, he tells him to train himself for godliness because godliness has value in every way (1 Timothy 4:8). It’s clear what the Bible is saying here: character is what we should value more than the attainment of anything else. Better yet, it’s a character that’s firm on the intentions and promises of God.

We don’t value character more than how we look, how successful we are, how much our net worth is, etc. We’re busy because we value the latter more. But how would our busyness look if we valued godliness and character more?

I think we would be busy. But there’s a difference between being busy and being on mission. 

Busyness is often a pursuit of pride that distracts us. Being on mission is being busy with a purpose.

We see this with how Paul is encouraging Timothy in the Bible. We even see this with Jesus. How they spent their time made sense of what they valued. Is the same true for you?