Redeeming the Time

Finding Space to Breathe in an Overwhelming Life

“Work, work from early until late.
In fact, I have so much to do that I shall spend
the first three hours in prayer.”
-Martin Luther (in reply to being asked what he would do that day)

To be frank, (albeit embarrassing to admit), my first response to Luther’s quote was “but…but…how will you have time to get everything done if you spend so much time praying first?!”

Oops…my priorities are showing.

“Oh, if we only had the luxury of so much time Martin Luther!” we might scoff as we rush out the door to check off the next “to do.” When did we get so busy? Our lives are filled to the brim, if not overflowing. Ink spilling into every corner of the calendar like a crime scene. Bleeding ink is how I describe it to friends.

As a teacher (once upon a time), I genuinely loved my fellow colleagues. They taught me much about the art and science of education, but something I rather wish I had not learned from them was the practice of never calling off sick. Their accumulated sick days became badges of honor. How many days do you have now? was a customary question. Our contract granted 12 sick days per year, and my beloved mentors had accumulated hundreds during their tenure. I aspired to be just like them. Whatever do we have against rest?

I powered through laryngitis, bronchitis, and migraine; and when I finally succumbed to a sick day, I spent the day with guilt as a bedfellow.

I’m a Martha through and through; but my heart longs to be a Mary.

---

In college I was introduced to the American transcendental authors, Emerson and Thoreau. Being a romantic at heart, I fell in love with their appreciation for idealism, simplicity, and the natural world—how Thoreau just up and decided to live in the woods for two years in a little cabin he built for himself with an ax he borrowed from a neighbor.

As a young professional, harried and overwhelmed, but too timid to swim against the current as Thoreau did, I poured my wistful yearning for a simpler life into poetry:

Wish List

I wanna be Meg Ryan
in You’ve Got Mail
own a little bookstore
and wear a smile on my face.
I wanna write poems
and read
to little kids
and watch their eyes light up
when I unveil secret worlds
of mystery and magic.

I wanna play with my son
while he’s little
and make tents
out of bedspreads
and plant my garden.
I wanna look at the sun
and stare at the moon.
Take walks
and show him the wonders
of God’s world.

And 20 years later, I still pine for the simplicity and freedom of what Thoreau called sauntering in the woods. (“I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits,” he wrote, “unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.”)¹ My husband and I have a little inside joke we share whenever life begins to feel like mad chaos. “Let’s get a New Zealand sheep farm.” I mean, neither of us has ever been to New Zealand, nor raised sheep, nor lived on a farm… but it sounds quite tranquil, doesn’t it?

Henry David Thoreau said in Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived… I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear…I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”²

Have you ever driven to a place so many times your body just somehow gets there and all of a sudden you realize you have no recollection of the journey? ‘Where was my mind that entire time?’ you wonder, and then you think about how scary it actually is that you just drove however many miles without presence of mind. That is not sucking out the marrow of life. That feels more like surviving life.
And what is even scarier is the idea that our entire lives can end that way. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” Thoreau wrote in 1854.³ Not much has changed in nearly two centuries. Why do we resign ourselves to that as though there were no other way? Feeling trapped by the “slough of despair” as in Pilgrim’s Progress, so many march quietly into the good night and fail to see the stairs offering exit.

There is a lot to do, but I think we often forget that we have a choice in what actually needs to be done. When we read the story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10, we read that Martha, who was busy with preparations, became “distracted” by them. The American Standard Version says “cumbered.”
It then sounds as though Jesus is rebuking Martha for requesting that Mary get up and help her, but he’s not. He’s not upset that she’s trying to prepare dinner for everyone. He’s not upset that she desires to be of service or to present her best for such a worthy guest. What He zeroes in on is her heart: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.”⁴

In Semitic languages, the repetition of a person’s name is used as a term of endearment. He’s not reprimanding her, He “is pleading with her not to miss the most important thing in the midst of all her good activity. It’s not that Martha just had a busy body; she had a busy heart. Jesus says, “I want your heart. You’re worried and distracted. You’re pulled a part. You’re weighed down. And I just love you,” teaches Pastor Ian Simkins.

“Her fault was that she grew “cumbered with much serving,” so that she forgot Him, and only remembered the service. She allowed service to override communion and so presented one duty stained with the blood of another.” Charles Spurgeon explains in Morning and Evening.⁵

And let’s reiterate that it is not that Martha wanted to serve that created the problem, it’s that she forgot for whom she was serving, for whom she was busy doing. Spurgeon says, “we ought to be Martha and Mary in one: we should do much service, and have much communion at the same time.”⁶

Martin Luther knew that in order to have the strength and energy required to accomplish all the day had in store for him, he would need a long drink from the Source of which his strength and energy came: the Living Water. The higher the demand, the more important the time spent with Him. “Remain in Me—and bear much fruit. Apart from Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5

Like so many, I love Psalm 23. When I find myself tossing and turning in the night, I begin to recite it over and over and feel peace reclaiming my heart and mind. To me, it is a picture of rest—Of the wonderfully nourishing rest our Good Shepherd offers. Everything about following Jesus is countercultural and resting from productivity is no different. The world tries to squeeze every drop of productivity from every minute of every day, but Jesus says, “I will lead you beside still waters and make you lie down in green pastures. I will provide all that you need and restore your soul.” Be still, and know that He is God— unlimited and self-sustaining —and remember that I am not.

We need not lead lives of quiet desperation. We need only to remember to stop once in a while and reassess why we’re doing what we’re doing and for whom we’re doing it. Following Jesus will always be countercultural, and it is all too easy to get swept up in the world’s current of bigger, faster, more.
Let us ask the Lord to “turn [our] eyes away from worthless things” (Ps 119:37) and “set our hearts on things above” instead. (Col 3:1) The price we pay for shallow living is a hefty sum. Thoreau sought to get his money’s worth and believed “the cost of a thing is the amount of life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”⁷
Or as the wisest Teacher of all taught: “What profits a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?” (Mark 8:36)

Let us adopt the pace of our Savior, which was the pace of availability—the pace of love. So often my days are set up like dominoes—remove just one and the whole thing breaks down. Are you interruptible—the way Jesus was when He walked the earth?

“God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans
by sending us people with claims and petitions…
It is part of the discipline of humility
that we must not spare our hand where it can perform a service
and that we do not assume
that our schedule is our own to manage,
but allow it to be arranged by God.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer⁸

The same God who exalts faithfulness over productivity and availability over time management.

The God who created time never intended for it to oppress us, dictating our every move. So, let us use it instead like all other resources gifted to us from God— with open hands and humble hearts, seeking wisdom from above, keeping an eye on eternity all the while.

---

1. Henry David Thoreau. Walking. (LG Classics: New York, 2016) p. 3

2. Henry David Thoreau. Walden and Resistance to Civil Government. (W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 1992) p. 61 (emphasis in the quoted sentence added by me)

3. Ibid. p. 5

4. See Luke 10:38-42 for the entire story. (I’ve linked the NLT translation as the wording helps the reader see the heart of the matter.)

5. Charles Spurgeon. Morning and Evening: The Classic Daily Devotional. (Barbour Books: Ohio, 2018) Evening January 24

6. Ibid.

7. Henry David Thoreau. Walden. p. 21

8. Richard A. Swenson, M.D. Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives. (NavPress: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004) p.128-129 (emphasis added)