Greg's Weekly Word(s): "business/busyness"

I'll be taking care of business (every day)

Taking care of business (every way)

I've been taking care of business (it's all mine)

Taking care of business and working overtime

- "Taking Care of Business" (1973), Bachman Turner Overdrive

We usually think of business as "what someone does for a livelihood." As in, "the business world," "business cards," etc. But originally, it meant something more along the lines of "minding our own business." That is, the matters that concern us or the things we care about...the things with which we stay busy.

Too often, though, our busyness can keep us from taking care of business. Our full schedules and frantic pace - working overtime at work, the minutia of life, emails and meetings and carpools and sports and all the things - can prevent us from attending to the things we truly care about.

Throughout this time of closures and quarantine and social distancing, I've become much more aware of the matters in my life that actually matter: my family, my relationships, my faith, my ministry... In fact, as we begin moving back towards what was (so-called) normal before COVID - and as excited as I am to be able to go more places and do more activities - I hope I do not lose the purposeful attention I have given to the things I truly care about.

How we stay busy - how we spend and invest our time - says a lot about what matters to us...what we care about. What would your schedule say about your life? What truly matters to you?

As a boy, lost in the busyness of a festival in the Holy City and found teaching in the Temple, Jesus said to his parents, "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?" (Luke 2:49). And throughout the rest of his life, we see exactly what that business was:

"...to bring good news to the poor...

to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

(Luke 4:18-19)

Hopefully we, too, can join him in taking care of business - every day and every way.

- GJD