pastoral musing

Resisting Activitism
Living in busy Singapore makes us feel like busyness is a badge of usefulness and even spirituality. Busy pastors are normal in many places. Busy in meetings, projects, teaching, strategising, etc. Meaningful busyness as some would say it.

But Eugene Peterson pulled no punches when he stated that "busyness is a sin!".

Busyness, through good church activities, can rob us of worship.
We can be so busy serving Him and missed relating to Him.
We can be so busy doing church and missed recognising His call.
We can be so busy solving problems and missed relying on His Spirit.

We need to stamp the tide of cultural influence and re-evaluate how we live our lives.
We need to question our need to be busy.
We need to ask soul searching questions on “where is God in our work”.
(if our work is to be truly our act of worship, God must be central and key!)
We need to make time to reflect or we will only be pushed to do what we have been scheduled to do.

Pauses in the day, breaks in the week, retreats in a year are all essential space of time we owe to God and ourselves to live life intentionally for worship.

Otherwise, we could complete our time on earth and realise that we have worshipped the church more than Christ!