Proverbs 20:13
Do not love sleep, lest you become impoverished;
open your eyes so that you might be satisfied with food.
“I’m just too busy” seems to be a pretty common response to many things nowadays. People are “just too busy,” so they don’t spend time with their families. They’re “just too busy” so they don’t spend time in prayer. They’re “just too busy” so they never serve, get to know their neighbors or do anything that doesn’t directly benefit them. People are “just too busy” so they don’t go to church, they don’t get to know people and develop meaningful relationships with them. People are “just too busy.”
The thing is, we’re not too busy for watching TV. We’re not too busy to spend hours a day on Facebook. We’re not too busy to send a thousand text messages a day. We’re not too busy to wait in line at Starbucks.
There are a lot of things that aren’t urgent that we’re not too busy to do. Why is it that the things we enjoy doing are the things that generally don’t have much benefit? We don’t gain a lot from watching TV or stalking our friends on Facebook, and yet we do it. And we keep going back to it.
I can hear your inner thoughts right now (I really can’t I just wanted to creep you out) “This proverb is about loving sleep, why’s he talking about being busy?”
Since you asked the question, I might as well answer it. Just because we’re not asleep doesn’t mean we’re not sleeping through life. Our heads may not be on our pillows, but our ambition sure is. We may be conscious, but are we awake? Or, vice versa. We may be awake, but are we conscious.
I feel like we’ve developed this mentality of “busyness” when we’re really not all that busy. Sure, some of you are busy. But just because someone’s busy doesn’t mean they are awake and living their life intentionally. And that’s kind of what I’m all about. I want all of us to be living our lives on purpose. I want us to be living intentionally. Not to just wander through life, bouncing from one shiny object to another, but to choose a destination and set a course.
So, open your eyes so that you might be satisfied. You won’t be satisfied if you are asleep. You won’t be satisfied if you’re just wander through life aimlessly. You will always feel like something is missing. You’ll feel like you spend your life recovering from every tragedy that comes. You just get back on your feet and then something else hits.
What if you spent your life going after the destination? How would that change the way you think about the problems that come along the way? You wouldn’t be living from trial to trial, you’d be living from success to success with trials here and there. You wouldn’t be wandering through life aimlessly, you’d be on course, on mission, going after what you were created to go after. You wouldn’t spend hours a day watching TV, eating junk food and comparing yourself to people you went to high school with on Facebook. You’d spend your days thinking about what you can do today to get another step closer to the mission.
The thing is, you can’t see goal if you’re eyes are closed.
