Torch, Spring/Summer 2011

Spring–Summer 2011 | TORCH 5 T he average office worker is interrupted 202 times a day. The average desk worker has 36 hours of work piled on his or her desk and spends three hours a week shuffling piles trying to find the right project to work on next. We spend one year of our lives searching through the clutter looking for misplaced objects. The average misplaced object travels 10 inches. More than 60 million Americans have sleep disorder problems — 27 percent of Americans fell asleep while driving last year. One-third of Americans say they are “rushed” all the time. In the 1960s, the futurists said by now you would have one wage earner in the family working 20 hours a week because progress and technology would lead to increased productivity. They predicted productivity would increase, wages would increase, and we’d all be bored. That is not what happened. Instead, the average husband and wife unit is working 90 hours, not 20. The prediction only missed by 350 percent. This is largely the result of progress. Progress is the notion that life automatically improves. We should work to make life better. But progress works largely by differentiation and always leads to more of everything — faster and faster. Progress cannot lead to less and slower. This is what the futurists forgot to factor in. Crossing the Line I like more. That’s the definition of American happiness: more than I have now. There’s no real problem with progress, differentiation, or more. My problem is that I have only a 24-hour day. Progress has to continue differentiating. It cannot afford to care that I have limits. If it stopped, our economy would fall apart. Meanwhile, progress is propelling me right into my limits. The fact that I have limits is not a threat to God. He does a good job running the universe without my help. That line for human limits is drawn differently for each person — some people are 10 times more productive than I am — but once you cross that line, bad things predictably happen to your life, including your spiritual life. Someone asked author Henry Blackaby how he accomplished all he did in his life. He said, “I spent my life hurrying God. I was running around doing all these things, and somehow God had to fit into it all. And then God said, ‘Henry, you’re not going to hurry Me anymore. You are going to have to fit into My schedule.’” Blackaby said it changed everything. We’re all running, but God’s not running after us. He knows that speed does not yield devotion. The presence of God is in inverse proportion to the pace of our lives — meditation, wisdom, and worship are slow, mellow, and deep. If your theology is to do all you can for God, although that sounds praiseworthy, you will always fail. Wherever you end the day is arbitrary. There is always something more you could do. Even if it’s 3 a.m., you could pray a little more. You could write a letter of encouragement to somebody. You and I could probably go downtown to a bar; there’s probably some despairing soul sitting there we could witness to. If we feel we have to pay God back, we will fail in our own theology every single day. Fortunately for us, God breaks into our work and says, “OK, good job. Now it’s time to sleep. Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on the universe.” Finding the Limit Short-term overload is not the enemy. It happens to everyone at some point — tax time or final exams. Chronic overload drains your spiritual reserves. It is an enemy of prayer, worship, meditation, loving one another, and service. We either stop doing those things or, worse, we simply go through the motions. Consider these three scenarios: