I was researching this week for a new message series coming soon which will focus on simplifying our lives so that we thrive instead of just barely survive. You know, abundant living, rather than desperate living. The busyness of our lives has ramped up to the point where it now consumes us at an unsustainable pace. This cannot end well. There are recent surveys that reveal some very alarming statistics. For example, in a survey conducted by Thomas and Art Rainer in 2009, they were staggered to discover that approximately 44 % of survey respondents agreed that if their daily life continued unchecked at the current pace, they would probably have significant health problems. Shocking, isn’t it? The respondents knew they are headed for serious problems – they agreed! Art Rainer went on to say that, “The stress of a go-go-go lifestyle has been linked to some of the following: heart disease, obesity, depression, memory problems, sleep disorders, anxiety, high blood pressure” and so on. Not to mention a raft of relationship issues, too. There is another longer list I am compiling from other research.
This is not a pretty picture. We are so obsessed with the way we use time and loading as much into our schedules as we can that we are putting our lives at risk. And for what? What kind of returns are we seeing for such frantic, frenetic living? How are we measuring the results? If the family is any kind of metric, the results ain’t good, at all. So what is the point?
Are we doing what we really want and need to do?
Are we enjoying life at such a pace?
In the last few pre-marriage courses I have conducted for couples in these last few years one thing stood out in all of the feedback more consistently than anything else. The time pressure that couples were experiencing was causing major stress and even anxiety. One of the big concerns, in the lead up to the wedding day, was that with all that needed doing, they seemed to have such little or no time left over for each other. Other research I have seen has discovered that in more than 50% of couples like this, the same trend continues well into the first years of marriage. This is not good at all, and soon their children are learning the same time-pressure living as mum and dad – the most influential people in their young lives – who are teaching them. And we wonder why mental health issues are at an all-time high.
So, health issues, serious marriage and family issues are being sown by us in the way we live and use time – and the research shows that we actually know this, but cannot seem to stop. We go right on doing it day in and day out.
We learned in physics in Secondary School that the faster an object travels the harder it is to stop it, and the greater the impact when it hits something immovable. This is what is happening to many of us in the way we live our lives. Like the speeding driver who makes a slight miscalculation and winds up injured and permanently impaired – or worse – in a pile of wreckage, so are we at huge risk as we continue to add more and more things to an already unsustainable, high-speed lifestyle.
I know what I am talking about!
I am not referring here to those unusual seasons where the pace ramps up as we encounter unforeseen challenges or crises that demand more from us, and maybe we have to handle extra responsibilities and the pressures that come with all that – for a time. That’s a temporary thing in life. It can happen to all of us at times. That is not my concern here. No, I’m talking about the way we live right now and the way we continue to inundate ourselves and our schedules with so much that we are travelling at high speed and are a tragedy about to happen. We’re too busy for God. Too busy for our kids. Too busy for our spouses and friends. And the pace is picking up – it’s not abating. If we’re too busy for all these things, what are we busy actually doing?
But, you already know that, right?
Maybe you are sensing the increasing risk in the frantic way you do life as you read this? What are you going to do now that you know it is hurting you and your loved ones? How long will you continue at such a pace before a tragic accident occurs that could be catastrophic?
What do the Scriptures say?
The wisdom of the apostle Paul …
Ephesians 5:15-16 (NIV+NKJ)
“Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
Two quick things here: “Be very careful … how you live”, and in the context of verse 16 this means being wise enough and very careful to not let time get away from you, or your busyness consume it on so many non-essential things which make no eternal difference. Second, “redeeming the time”. One possible inference here is that we need to review our schedules and priorities and rescue time from all those things wanting to chew it up and redeploy it on what really matters, so that we live wisely … and abundantly.
Maybe it is time to look at your current living pace – the constant velocity of it - and avoid a high-speed prang that you just may not walk away from in once piece? Sooner or later something will break …
Be very careful … redeeming the time … the days are evil.
That’s what I reckon anyway.
Ps Milton
[Sources: Prepare Enrich research, Rainer and Rainer research]