Sunday Preach It

Much of time has been on my mind. Time spent. How was it spent? Did I spend it as the Lord would have had me spend it? My mind has been pondering time.

So the stream of thoughts I felt I almost observed flowing in my mind was particularly interesting to me.

I think I need to set this up more.

First, I believe most of us are way too dang busy. Our calendars are ordered by the hour with various appointments, dates, and to-do lists.

Second, I believe that most folks believe that the full calendars equate to fullness and satisfaction in life.  They see a full calendar and believe that this means they are doing something especially well and right.  This may be, but I think, more often than not, it just means that we are too busy.

Third, I believe that the most important things we can accomplish are things we can readily and easily do within the confines of our own homes – almost all the time.  Obviously, church and Temple attendance are two important exceptions for most folks.

Back to the stream of thoughts I was interested in that I felt myself almost apart from and observing:

It was a day a couple weeks ago in which I felt particularly happy and peaceful as I sat down absolutely alone, in a Chick-Fil-A with only one lunch to deal with, after visiting the Temple earlier.  It was the very first time in, literally, years that I’d been out by myself for any length of time.  While I was preggie with Jmy I went to the Temple alone a few times, but I never spent any more time away than the time it took to get there, work and get home.  So, this particular day a couple weeks ago was special and quite nice.

If someone had told me ten years ago that I would relish and be happy to sit alone to eat in a restaurant, I would’ve likely laughed them to scorn.  But, I was truly enjoying the feeling of having accomplished very little (but good things were accomplished) and probably not accomplishing much more upon returning home, other than the normal routine of straightening the house, milking the goat, eating dinner, and the bits preceding going to bed.

A pair of women took up the seat to my back.  They immediately began comparing the busy-ness and activity of their day.  Before one even finished a sentence, the other way chiming in with the things that she did that made her morning or the hour just prior busier than the other woman’s morning or hour.  It was not only one of them who did this.  It was a back-and-forth exchange.  They communicated about the busy of their lives like it was the most important thing they could possibly discuss.

Although it is contrary to who I desire to be and the life I am cultivating, I found a part of me wondering if maybe I wasn’t doing enough.  I’m speaking symbolically when I say that the strange stream of consciousness began small enough and was rather curious, so I paid a little attention.  As I paid it some heed, it seemed to surge and gain strength… it began to grow and I started to actually feel a concern that maybe my life was going in the wrong direction… perhaps I should be doing more, earning more, making more of myself.  I almost started to feel sad and unhappy with my quiet life when I realized what was happening and I slammed a wall in front of the head of that stream and quickly shoveled as much dirt on top as was necessary to staunch the flow of that stream.

One could easily begin to think that a life cultivated in quietness and worship is wrong and foolish if streams such as those are allowed to cut paths into belief and eventually become torrential and life altering rivers.

The following are a few memes I’ve run across on facebook that are particularly pertinent to my point:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you have any experiences like this?