What does the Bible say about busyness / being too busy?

So many of God's people become weary in well-doing because they find themselves overburdened with the cares and anxieties of this present life. In the home, the office and the workshop, in private and in public life, there is an incessant drain upon the vital energies of mind and body. Every nerve cries aloud for relief, for rest.

Modern conditions form a continual menace to the welfare of the soul. Time, thought, and financial means are taxed beyond endurance to make ends meet in matters of everyday existence. True children of God are heated and bothered. They are so exhausted that they seem unable to find a quiet moment for prayer, praise, and Bible-reading.

There is a routine of things and duties connected with earth which sometimes catches hold of us and draws us down; even necessary care for relations may get to occupy the mind so as to hinder the outflow of a heavenly walk.

If we are ever going to accomplish anything outside of our daily employment, we have to take up the matter of time and settle distinctly a number of points. The person who works eight or ten hours a day, and has to spend two more hours in going to and returning from work, has very little spare time. The element of home duties, bodily strength, and the necessary attendance at one or more weekly meetings consumes much of the remainder of our waking hours. Seven or eight hours must be devoted to sleep if the body is to be kept in working order. Perhaps it would be as well for each one to draw up some sort of list of the way in which the twenty-four hours are disposed of. Such a list might look something like this: Work, 9 hours. Going to and fro, 2 hours. Morning and evening meals, 1&1/2 hours. Luncheon, hour. Sleep, 8 hours.

This leaves us but two hours out of the twenty-four in which to do numberless things — dressing, general reading, an occasional visit, two meetings a week — so it is not too strong a word to say that we must fight for whatever time we are to give to systematic Bible reading. It is no wonder that the average busy man or woman says, "Do you see? — what time have I to do all these nice things that you suggest? It is utterly out of question;" and so it goes.

Some have to leave their homes at a very early hour. Some have little or no spare time throughout the day. Others return to their homes late at night and excessively wearied in body. Some again seem to be unable to find a quiet time to read the Bible in private.

Is it possible that you have to confess that you have no time for His things, and that from dawn to sundown you are fully occupied with the duties of the day? Then, indeed, you are under the galling yoke of these most tyrannical foes of your soul — earthly things.

The whole life would be affected. Let us suppose that an ordinarily busy Christian young man has been accustomed to sleep until the last possible minute in the morning, so that he must hurry through everything to get to his business in time; who has spent his spare moments on the train or elsewhere in aimless conversation or reading of questionable things; whose evenings are spent in mere social intercourse, often leading to associations and amusements which cannot but injure the soul, and retiring late at night with conscience none too much exercised, to repeat the same experience day after day. Will such an one grow? Need we be surprised if he makes no progress?

I have thus freely expressed my thoughts and feelings, in the hope that some may be helped and encouraged thereby. Many known to me, who have a willing heart for service, feel pressed for time. Engaged in business during the day, and with meetings almost every evening, when or where is the time, they may truly say, for drinking in? I am familiar with the difficulty. But it is a much happier thing to be overpressed with service for the Lord, than hardly to know how to fill up your time. Be thankful! The very pressure, when the Master is before the mind, separates the heart from the scene around. Nothing else will; and the moment the hands are freed from the secular they are ready for the spiritual.

I have thus freely expressed my thoughts and feelings, in the hope that some may be helped and encouraged thereby. Many known to me, who have a willing heart for service, feel pressed for time. Engaged in business during the day, and with meetings almost every evening, when or where is the time, they may truly say, for drinking in? I am familiar with the difficulty. But it is a much happier thing to be overpressed with service for the Lord, than hardly to know how to fill up your time. Be thankful! The very pressure, when the Master is before the mind, separates the heart from the scene around. Nothing else will; and the moment the hands are freed from the secular they are ready for the spiritual.

If there are any I feel for more than others, it is those of God's people who are engrossed in business, and who have to spend their time in the midst of all the bustle, and excitement, and turmoil of business life, with little leisure from it. We do not feel enough for one another as to this, beloved friends. It is wonderful how little we care for one another in this way — how little we feel for one another. We are becoming so intensely individual, so isolated, as it were. "Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others," is the scripture thought about it; but how much do you and I? How often do we pray for one another? How much do we carry one another upon our hearts before God? There are many of God's people that are engaged in business, and with all our hearts we should feel for them, seek to help, strengthen, and sustain them in the tremendous rush and confusion that they go through every day; because there must be a loss, a positive loss, to the soul of any one who has not time to enjoy solitariness, and meditation, and communion with God. I cannot see how it is possible to get on without it. The Lord help us to understand the meaning of that word, "To meditate with joy in his temple!" "I desire to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to meditate with joy in his temple." Such is the simple, normal exercise of the life of a Christian.

Sixthly, the soul that looks to the LORD for his help can count upon the unfailing care of the LORD in all circumstances. "Going" and "coming" speak of the changing circumstances that mark a world of unrest. In the gospel day, the Lord could say to His disciples, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile: for there were many coming and going, and they had not leisure so much as to eat" (Mark 6:31). In His compassionate care the Lord will give us times of rest "apart" from the busy world; but, down here, it will only be "rest awhile" — words that indicate we must be again in movement. For the eternal rest we must look on. "There remains … a rest to the people of God." Of the one that enters into that blessed rest we read, "He shall go no more out" (Heb. 4:9; Rev. 3:12). In the meantime, in all the busy round of a life of toil in a world of need, the one that looks to the Lord for his help can count on the Lord to keep him in every circumstance.