“I’m too busy”
Dear Friends,
I’ve lost count of the number of times people have told me they’re too busy to come to church, or that they’ll come to something if they’re not busy. It sounds very reasonable. After all, none of us can be in two places at once. And we do need to honour commitments that we have made. And we all have to make difficult choices.
But I wonder if people realise what they’re really saying, and what lies behind such a response? What they’re really saying is that other things are more important to them. After all, we all manage to do the things that we think we simply have to do: eating, sleeping, working, and so on. What they’re saying is that God comes lower down their order of priorities. And how do we feel when friends or family tell us they haven’t got time to see us?
What a good thing it is that God didn’t treat us the same way, and that he wasn’t too busy for us – too busy to send his Son to save us. And what a good thing it is that Jesus wasn’t too busy to come! And, lest we forget, Jesus came to earth to die in agony, and all because of the way we’ve treated God. When we look at it in those terms, surely it’s ridiculous to say that we’re too busy for God, when “he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10, NIV).
Chris Hobbs,
Vicar.