Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Busyness”
Our Bible verse for today: “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” Colossians 3:23 (NIV)
Our thought for today: “The Lord deserves our best.”
I remember once watching a professional juggler juggling colored balls. He started out with just three but as his act progressed he continued to add more and more balls into the routine. Soon he was juggling six at one time, then seven, then eight. The more he added the harder he had to work and the more difficult it became to keep it all going.
Then he started picking up the speed and not only was he juggling eight colored balls at once, but he was doing it faster and faster. I was amazed that he was able to keep all those balls in the air at one time. Then he attempted to add in one more but it was too much, and they all came crashing down.
What’s true of jugglers with colored balls is also true of you and me. We can only juggle so many tasks and activities at a time. How many balls can you comfortably keep in the air and how many is too many? The more you try to juggle the harder you have to work at it and the more difficult it gets. And eventually, you will add in one too many and it will all come crashing down.
But before that happens, before the crash occurs, you will still have all your balls in the air but you will be less and less in control of them – and your effectiveness will be quickly diminishing.
Colossians 3:23 is a classic verse of Scripture which exhorts the followers of Christ to work well and enthusiastically at whatever we’re doing. The implication is that we are to do our best, we are to be our best, and we are to strive for excellence. But that can only be true if we can focus enough on any one thing to give it our best. If we have too many things going on, then we can give each one only a little bit of attention before our focus must necessarily shift to the next ball that needs to be caught – because if we don’t shift our attention to that next one (which is coming up fast), we will drop it, and then we will probably drop the others too.
Let me shift metaphors: an over-filled, overwhelmed life is like trying to cram ten pounds of stuff into a five pound bag – the bag will be busting at the seams and overflowing. That describes many of our lives too; they are busting at the seams and overflowing.
In life we don’t want to allow ourselves to get to the point that we’re doing so many things a little bit, that we’re doing none of them well. And we certainly don’t want to get to the point that we have so much going on that we can no longer keep it all going and therefore it all comes crashing down (and sooner or later it always does).
I want to encourage all of us to consider the things we have going on in our lives and then make smart decisions regarding what’s truly important and what isn’t; what we need to keep doing and what we don’t.
The Lord and the other people in our lives deserve our best. But if we’re too busy, we won’t be able to give them our best.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 