Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Busyness”
Our Bible verse for today: “When I considered all that I had accomplished and what I had labored to achieve, I found everything to be futile and a pursuit of the wind. There was nothing to be gained under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 2:11 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Is it worth it?”
Some of you are old enough to remember the hit song from 1969 “Take a letter, Maria”. It was song by singer R.B. Greaves and it was about an accomplished professional man who had given so much time and attention to his job that he neglected his wife. One night he came home to discover that during his frequent extended absences his wife had been having a love affair with another man.
In the song this man is now dictating a letter to his secretary, Maria, informing his wife that he is divorcing her. But the lyrics are also a form of explanation to Maria as he described how he ruined his marriage by giving too much time to his job. All those years he been very busy, but he had been busy with the wrong things. And in the end he lost that which should have been most important to him, his marriage.
In Ecclesiastes 2:11 we hear from King Solomon near the end of his life. He was an old man and in many ways he had been very successful in life. But to hear him tell it now, he had been excessively busy with things that ultimately didn’t matter much. He wrote, “I found everything to be futile and a pursuit of the wind.”
Stories like King Solomon and the man in R.B. Greave’s song are far too common. People spend years of their lives busily pursuing things that don’t matter much in the long run, and all the while they neglect the things that should be the most important to them such as their marriage, or their children, or their health. It’s the old story of the person who spent most of their life climbing the ladder of success only to get to the top and discover the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.
For a few more days we’re going to continue giving thought to how and why we tend to get busy with the wrong things. Then we will shift our focus to being busy with the right things. But for now, I want to encourage each of us to give careful thought to what it is we’re allowing ourselves to be so busy with. And then prayerfully consider if maybe some changes need to be made.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 