The Inconvenience of Today

How many of you are busy most days with various things to do whether it’s work or appointments errands to run? People today, both those who work and even those retired consider themselves busy, and even feel busier than in previous generations. A BBC article says that survey’s show that exact conclusion, that people say that they are even busier than ever before, and one survey in 2014 even pointed out that the number of people willing to take surveys have diminished because of this sense of busyness. Oddly enough, research also shows that although roles have shifted for men and women over the years in terms of paid vs. unpaid work the overall amount of work done remains roughly the same. Meaning that while more women work in the workforce than say 50 years ago, more men work less or not at all than they did 50 years ago so the balance of work, chores, activities, and leisure has remained roughly the same. The ratios are different but the overall numbers remain constant as they have been for some time.

What the research has shown is that what has shifted is the way in which we interact with the world. Fifty years ago and beyond life was much more physical or tangible. Today the world is much more informational. Meaning that if I happen to not be busy at a particular moment, instead of taking that time, most people fill it with the busyness of information. There are emails to be answered, countless shows and movies to catch up on. Social media to peruse and post on so that you can show all the glorious or horrible things that are happening in our lives. So with all our free moments we fill them with the instantaneousness of the information around us and in our own hands. There is also the phenomenon happening that the busier we are doing things the more important we feel or we are perceived by others. Our busyness is a sign of our accomplishments and importance or status. Which is also odd, becuase the same research says that the more we push ourselves into busyness and the need to do more and consume more, the less productive we actually become. Which then drives us to work harder and longer (aka become even busier) to achieve the same results.

Not only does it affect all of that but the BBC article linked another survey that showed that a person’s sense of busyness correlates directly to their willingness to show compassion. The results concluded that people with a low sense of hurry helped 63% of the time, medium hurry 45%, and high hurry only 10% of the time. So that means that more we see ourselves as busy people and are filling our days with physical and informational busyness, the more in a hurry we will always seem, and therefore the less likely we are to help someone who is in need.

So when we do encounter someone who is in need we will more than likely see their need as an inconvenience than something that is actually important. The typical response to a person in need is that they are too busy to help. I have to go here or I have to do that. I want to preface what I am going to say next by saying I don’t know this man’s situation, but he was walking out of a store and was asked by a man trying to get money for kids who could not afford school supplies. The man replied that if he gave him money then who was going to pay for his kids things as they were going to school, and that he trying to get back to work to pay for those very things so he couldn’t stop or afford to do what this man was asking. He felt that he was scarce on both his time and his resources. Which begs the question of when? If we are so short on time and resources all the time, then when do we help?

While there are many things we could talk about in regard to Jesus healing this woman, what really struck me was this same sense of timing and busyness and compassion. Jesus is in the synagogue teaching and a woman shows up who has been bent over for 18 years and the leader of the synagogue wants this woman to come back during their regular office hours. He is so focused on the idea of what should be happening that he didn’t make room for what could happen. The schedule for the day was worship and no work. Healing was work. He was so focused on what was proper that he became blind to the need of another person who was standing there in front of him. The inconvenience of today was all he could think about.

All Jesus could think about was the the inconvenience this woman had undergone for 18 years! Jesus cleared his schedule. His teaching that he was doing in the synagogue could happen again when he was done healing this woman. His lunch could wait another five minutes. His appointment in the next town could be pushed back another day. Jesus whole life and ministry was centered around compassion. The very thing that a sense of busyness or hurry causes us to have little of. Jesus didn’t let the rules or information or anything else stop him from doing what was right. Sure it was the Sabbath, but if there were exceptions for other things on the Sabbath to make their busy lives easier, then certainly an exception for this woman could be made too. And that’s exactly what Jesus did. He made room and an exception for this woman so that she did not have to suffer another moment let alone another day before being made whole again.

If we’re going to fill our lives with busy schedules then perhaps we can follow Jesus’ example and make sure there is always room for the inconvenience of a person in need. And I cannot emphasize enough that this restoration that Jesus does to this bent over woman, may have made her stand up straight again, but it was so much more than that. Any time that Jesus cured a person, any time he cast out a demon, any time he brought someone back to life, yes it was a miracle to their physical bodies, but the most important thing it did was that in the eyes of all those people this person was also restored to their faith, their family and their friends. Without that healing that woman would have continued to be on the margins. Jesus brought her immediately back into the fold of the family of faith, and that instant restoration was more important than the inconvenience of the the day, the event, or his schedule. Jesus restores all of us to that right relationship and calls us to do the same. To look past our busyness, our rules, or the inconvenience of the moment in order to allow people to right here and right now be brought into a right relationship with God. Perhaps you have experienced that kind of restoration and that we can all agree that if we can help God do that, it is worth the inconvenience of today. For God their is no greater joy than for one more person to know the love, grace, and forgiveness that God has to freely give to all those who are on the margins of this life. Amen.