Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem

by Kevin DeYoung

When we are crazy busy, we put our souls at risk. The challenge is not merely to make a few bad habits go away. The challenge is to not let our spiritual lives slip away. The dangers are serious, and they are growing. And few of us are as safe as we may think.

Busyness is like sin: kill it, or it will be killing you. Most of us fall into a predictable pattern. We start to get overwhelmed by one or two big projects. Then we feel crushed by the daily grind. Then we despair of ever feeling at peace again and swear that something has to change. Then two weeks later life is more bearable, and we forget about our oath until the cycle starts all over again. What we don’t realize is that all the while we’ve been a joyless wretch, snapping like a turtle and as personally engaging as a cat. When busyness goes after joy, it goes after everyone’s joy.

it any wonder that the most stressed-out people on the planet live in the most affluent

Busyness kills more Christians than bullets.

The seed of God’s Word won’t grow to fruitfulness without pruning for rest, quiet, and calm.

What’s going on in my soul, so that busyness comes out as my chief challenge every year?

The greatest danger with busyness is that there may be greater dangers you never have time to consider.

As Christians, especially, we ought to know better because we understand deep down that the problem is not just with our schedules or with the world’s complexity—something is not right with us. The chaos is at least partly self-created.

Things are not the way they ought to be because we are not the way we are supposed to be.

But the truth is, you’re only indispensable until you say no. You are unique. Your gifts are important. People love you. But you’re not irreplaceable.

Many of us feel proud to be so busy, and we enjoy the sympathy we receive for enduring such heroic responsibilities.

Am I trying to do good or to make myself look good?

So instead of our encouraging those we host, they feel compelled to encourage us with constant reassurances that everything is just fine.

There is a fine line between care and cumber. In many instances, less ado would serve better.

work hard; work long; work often. Just remember it’s not supposed to be about you. Feed people, not your pride.

The sermon was based on John the Baptist’s words, “I freely confess I am not the Christ.”

have to be okay with other Christians doing certain good things better and more often than we do.

Jesus didn’t do it all. Jesus didn’t meet every need. He left people waiting in line to be healed. He left one town to preach to another. He hid away to pray. He got tired. He never interacted with the vast majority of people on the planet. He spent thirty years in training and only three years in ministry. He did not try to do it all. And yet, he did everything God asked him to do.

I have often marveled to think that Jesus was so terrifically busy, but only with the things he was supposed to be doing.

Jesus was tempted in every way just as we are, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15). And that includes the temptation to be sinfully busy.

Jesus knew the difference between urgent and important. He understood that all the good things he could do were not necessarily the things he ought to do.

The person who never sets priorities is the person who does not believe in his own finitude.

One reason we never tame the busyness beast is because we are unwilling to kill anything.

We live in an age where the future happiness and success of our children trumps all other concerns. No labor is too demanding, no expense is too high, and no sacrifice is too great for our children. A little life hangs in the balance, and everything depends on us.

“Under Kindergarchy,” Joseph Epstein observes, “all arrangements are centered on children: their schooling, their lessons, their predilections, their care and feeding and general high maintenance—children are the name of the game.”

Parenting may be the last bastion of legalism. Not just in the church, but in our culture.

Our children, Caplan argues, are suffering from “secondhand stress.”7

It would be better for us and for our kids if we planned fewer outings, got involved in fewer activities, took more breaks from the kids, did whatever we could to get more help around the house, and made parental sanity a higher priority.

We will parent imperfectly, our children will make their own choices, and God will mysteriously and wondrously use it all to advance his kingdom.”

“When I was young I had six theories and no kids. Now I have six kids and no theories.” I must be ahead of the curve: it took me only five kids to run out of theories.

“I’m not sure what my parents were doing or if they even knew what they were doing. But I always knew my parents loved me, and I knew they loved Jesus.”

“I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”8

So we do not accept virtual encounters as adequate substitutes for flesh and blood relationships.

We must choose our absence, our inability, and our ignorance—and choose wisely. The sooner we embrace this finitude, the sooner we can be free. ____________________________

Idleness is not a mere indulgence or vice. It is necessary to getting anything done.

the reason we are busy is because we are supposed to be busy.

The antidote to busyness of soul is not sloth and indifference. The antidote is rest, rhythm, death to pride, acceptance of our own finitude, and trust in the providence of God.

What if being a friend, or just being a Christian, is supposed to mean a lot of time-consuming, burden-bearing, gloriously busy, and wildly inefficient work?

“Whether you live in the East or the West,” Fernando says, “you will suffer if you are committed to people.”

I know from personal experience that some forms of busyness are from the Lord and bring him glory. Effective love is rarely efficient. People take time. Relationships are messy. If we love others, how can we not be busy and burdened at least some of the time?

Your busyness is not wrong. But it is not best.”

But out of all the concerns in our lives, can we honestly say and show that sitting at the feet of Jesus is the one thing that is necessary?

few unhurried minutes are better than a distracted hour, and a consistent habit is better than a sporadic burst of fits and starts.

We have to believe that hearing from God is our good portion. We have to believe that the most significant opportunity before us every day is the opportunity to sit at the feet of Jesus. We won’t rearrange our priorities unless we really believe this is the best one.

What is wrong—and heartbreakingly foolish and wonderfully avoidable—is to live a life with more craziness than we want because we have less Jesus than we need. ____________________________