Then Jesus said to him, “Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’ Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.” -Luke 14:16-19

God wills that I work hard and contribute to the progress of humanity. But God does not will for me to be too busy. If I am too busy, then I am not taking care of the body, mind and spirit that God has entrusted to me. Nor am I doing any favors to those I serve, since I am not truly giving my healthiest, holiest, happiest self. So, while there may be brief periods when I must endure an overwhelming schedule, I should not allow myself to be in a permanent state of being overwhelmed with tasks to perform. If I do find myself in such a state, I must first admit that this is the result of choices that I made. I simply bit off more than I could chew. I said “yes” to more things than I could handle. The solution would be for me to learn to say “no.” If this has been a problem for a while, then I need to explore in prayer what my motivation is for hurting myself this way.

One motivation may be that I am addicted to work. Just as I could misuse alcohol, drugs and food, so, too, could I misuse God’s gift of work. A second motivation may be that I simply don’t love myself enough to take good care of myself. I don’t see myself as the precious and fragile gift that I am. A third motivation may be that of arrogance. It is arrogant of me to think that I must be the one to solve everyone’s problems. It is humble of me to admit my limitations and my inability to be the savior of anything. A hardworking priest who was taking some time off from his busy job was stopped on the street by an alcoholic, homeless man. The man told the priest about his many serious problems and asked him for money. The priest looked at him with sincere compassion and said, “I see that you have very real and very serious problems, and I’m sorry for that. But I don’t believe that I’m the one who can help you with those problems right now. All that I can do is promise to pray for you.” This priest was not selfish or uncaring; he simply knew his limitations and was humble enough to admit it to himself and to the homeless man. But you can imagine what the homeless guy thought of the priest! Which brings up a fourth motivation for not being able to say “no.” Very often, I am not strong enough to take others’ rejection of me. I feel guilty because someone else is angry or disappointed with me. But in order to live a happy, healthy, holy life I must accept that I will at times disappoint or anger others. There are simply no other options if I wish to care for myself in the way that God wills.

SUGGESTED SCRIPTURE PASSAGES

GENESIS 1:1-2:4: God created the heavens and the earth, then God rested

PSALM 62: My soul rests in God alone

PSALM 131: O Lord, my soul is still

ECCLESIASTES 1:1-2:26: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity

MATTHEW 6:25-34: Consider the lilies

MATTHEW 11:28-30: Come to me, all you who are weary

MATTHEW 24:36-51: We do not know the day or the hour

MARK 6:30-33: Come away awhile

LUKE 9:57-62: Let me bury my father first

LUKE 10:38-42: Martha, Martha, you are anxious about many things

LUKE 14:15-24: Dinner guests are too busy to accept the invitation

LUKE 16:19-31: The rich man and Lazarus

PRAYER POINTERS

Sometimes God asks me to do overwhelmingly difficult work. At other times, I simply have taken on more work than I should have. My first task in prayer, then, is to discern whether this busyness is God’s will or if it is simply my problem of overloading myself with work.

If it is God’s will for me right now, then I beg God for the strength to endure. I join my sufferings to Jesus’ ordeal of the Passion. In that light, I see that God is not asking of me anything that his Son did not himself endure. I see that my task is puny compared to Jesus’ most difficult work. I draw strength from knowing that my God is with me and has preceded me.

If it is my problem of overburdening myself, then I must explore the roots of this problem. Why is it that I have done this to myself? Is this a pattern in my life? Am I addicted to work? Do I love myself enough to take good care of myself? Do I arrogantly see myself as the only one who can solve these problems?

I prayerfully consider if there are one or more tasks that God would like me to let go of at this time. I pray for the courage and strength it will take for me to admit to others that I simply can’t handle this right now. I spiritually prepare myself for the consequences, knowing that God will be with me through it all. I pray over my calendar, evaluating each item this way.

Confront, Hate, Ministry, Noontime, Stressed, Weary

WORDS TO TAKE WITH YOU

Burnout is when your true motives come home to roost.

-Anonymous

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

-Wilhelm Stekel, quoted in The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger