“The more you do, the better you are,” has been the attitude of my heart over the last 27 years. I think I learned it from the work ethic of my family and I think they learned it from our culture. I don’t know the origin, because I am not a historian, but as I look back over the last hundred years of our country it makes sense. World War I, the depression, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the War on Terrorism today. Difficult times brings great sacrifice. Suffering brings endurance. Endurance brings habit. A century of war has brought our country to eliminate the non-essentials so that we can focus on what is important. This has been good and bad together. The problem isn’t that the non-essentials were eliminated. The problem is that the essentials were eliminated.

This brings up the question of what is essential and what is not. This is a great question to ponder and there are two ways to look at it. First, “What will keep you from dying?” (the scarcity mindset). Second, “What will make you thrive?” (the abundance mindset). Let’s answer the first question, because this is the question that we’ve been asking as a culture.

Question one:

to keep a human being from dying there are the obvious: food, water, shelter (necessary resources to keep the physical body alive). But I wouldn’t stop there. Within a society, there must be justice, peace, righteousness (the pieces that protect and provide for people).

Question two:

in order to thrive there needs to be a deep sense of purpose, a connection/intimacy with God and significant others (family, spouse, friends), ability to think/feel the way you do safely and express it in peaceful ways. Beyond that, each person should understand how his Maker made him uniquely and seek to live to reflect the Maker’s Mark in him.

When you answer question one with question two things or vice versa you have a hell of a life. Disorder, discontentment, disillusionment. If you ask the average American Joe what the american dream is, he will tell you it is to make a lot of money, so that he can do what he wants to. But to say, “I want to have money so that I can thrive,” is a fallacy at the core. The pursuit of resources will remove scarcity but will never produce an inner abundance, because scarcity deals with the external, while abundance deals with the internal and relational. And those who passionately pursue wealth are really trying to fill the vacuum in their heart.

So, what is the problem with busyness? Busyness at the core comes from a desire to have an ordered physical life. A successful business will produce financial resources which solve the living conditions problem. But a pursuit of the physical body in exclusion to the pursuit of the soul leaves us dead inside. Having good physical conditions doesn’t make you thrive. In fact having too much stuff and focusing on the material world actually does the opposite. It kills us inside, because it encourages us to deprive our souls of what truly does bring life.

I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t enjoy the physical life, because we are physical. To say the only thing that matters is the spiritual world is a mistake, because our whole experience of life is through a physical body. We should enjoy playing football and canoeing and festivities and dancing and laughter. However,

if this is our whole life, we will feel empty. Think about the celebrities in this world. They seem to have it all, but are missing the most important part. Wealth does bring freedom of choice, but does not bring inner happiness. The physical and the spiritual must be married if we want to truly live. We need to slow down our lives so that the still, quiet voice of God can seep into our lives. He speaks purpose into our life. He is eternal and immortal. He is not frantic in his actions, worried about what will happen. And he loves you, not what you can do for him. He doesn’t need you to provide for Him. He can do everything he needs to himself anyway. He simply wants your heart, because he wants give you life.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important the clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable then they? Who of you by worrying [about these things] can add a single hour to his life?” - Jesus