Take Time to Be Unproductive
How Busyness Can Waste a Life
By Kelly M. Kapic
Søren Kierkegaard, a nineteenth-century Danish theologian and social critic, once wrote in his journal, “The result of busyness is that an individual is very seldom permitted to form a heart.” We sense in our souls he is right. Unrelenting busyness—running here and there, late and in haste, always with more to do than we have time for—stifles the life of the heart.
Yet I fear that many in the church, especially those of us in various forms of leadership, often pursue that very busyness. We occasionally warn others about burnout and stress, but we are constantly in motion, endlessly feeling harassed by all that clamors to be done and feeling guilty for projects we haven’t completed. And we frequently pass that stress on to others, in subtle but destructive ways—we are busy, so we can act like everyone else should be busy. If they are not, we can treat them as lazy or negligent.
But is our problem primarily that we are not more productive, or is it that we have allowed unrealistic expectations to distort our vision of faithfulness?
(Read the article here.)
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