Focus on the Family with Jim Daly

John Fuller: Today, we’re considering how to overcome busyness.

Katharine Hill: Friendships take time. Love takes time. And our relationship with God takes time.

John: Thanks for joining us for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller.

Jim Daly: Uh, John, Katharine Hill is our guest today, and she’s a wonderful friend from across the pond, as they say. She’s the director of Care for the Family, our sister ministry in the United Kingdom, and she speaks and writes on family issues. Katharine is a former solicitor specializing in family law and has also served as a magistrate. She’s married to Richard. They have four adult children and five grandchildren. And with those credentials, uh, I think it’s obvious that she knows a thing or two about busyness.

John: I would think so, yes.

Jim: (laughs)

John: Uh, here’s Katharine Hill speaking to our staff in the fall of 2022. We’re gonna start after her opening remarks as she explains how she responded to a question from a close friend and mentor. Here she is on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

Katharine: The question was this, “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?”

Audience: (laughs)

Katharine: Well, I thought for a few minutes, and then I remembered that a few weeks previously my husband Richard and I had taken our little grandchildren to Bristol Zoo. And when we were there, we had gone to a place called Bug World. Now, Bug World was full of creepy-crawlies and, uh, minibeasts, locusts and spiders and beetles. Their little eyes were wide. But what really caught my attention was a case of leafcutter ants. These magnificent creatures walked in line. They carried leaves up to 50 times worth their body weight. They were purposeful. They were getting a lot done.

And as I thought about that question, I thought, “In many ways, I think my life resembles that little ant.” I tend to be reliable. I tend to be busy. I tend to be productive and reasonably organized. I’m quite small, but I have quite a big capacity. So I thought, “That is it, I think I am an ant.”

Audience: (laughs)

Katharine: And I decided that the question was actually quite a good one after all. I remembered that in the Book of Proverbs, the writer commends the ant for her industry, says, “Go to the ant now, sluggard. Consider her ways and be wise.” But then came another question, another question that caught me off my guard. “If you could be any animal, what animal would you like to be?” And it’s sobering when a simple question reveals an uncomfortable truth about our lives. And whilst it felt good to have the reputation of being someone who was busy and who got a lot done, I felt being an ant all of a sudden felt a bit, a bit small and a bit unde- uh, one-dimensional, but that’s who I thought I was.

But then my mind went to a trip that we’d been privileged to take to South Africa. We had had the honor of being taken on a safari, and I had loved every minute of it. But one moment stayed in my mind. It was on the evening game drive, and the sun was going down, casting long shadows across the beautiful African terrain. And there was a gentle breeze that was making the grasses just wave gently. And the guy that was driving our jeep, he stopped and he got out a pair of binoculars. And he pointed, and we saw a lot of zebra just grazing in the grass. It was an absolutely beautiful sight. And we watched them, and then we realized that he had seen something that we had missed. In the grass lying down completely still was a lioness. She was hiding in plain sight. The zebra hadn’t seen her. She was majestic. She was strong. She was graceful. She was confident, and she was secure.

She was waiting for the right moment to channel her powerful energy. We waited for 10, 15 minutes. She inched forward a tiny little bit, and then, again, she lay down. And we waited again. I could’ve waited all night, but sadly, we had to move on. And I remembered then a phrase that felt brilliantly described, uh, how she was. It was an active stillness. She wasn’t lazy. She was rested, but when she needed to go, she could go. And I felt a sense of longing. And in that moment, I knew the answer. I wanted to be like that lioness, but could I ever, ever live like that? The difference between that tiny little ant scurrying around and that majestic, actively still lioness seemed almost laughable.

Now, Jesus is talking to His followers. And in The Message translation of the Bible of Matthew 11:28, He says this. “Are you tired, worn out, burnt out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” And I began to wonder, what could that mean for each of us? What could it mean for me to keep company with Jesus but to walk freely and lightly, not on a desert island, not in a monastery miles away from anywhere, but right in the busyness of our everyday lives, in the workplace, in our churches, in our families?

Now, in our kitchen in our home, we have two charts that are both very important in our family life. One of them is behind the door, and it’s written on a wall. It’s a patch of paint that we’ve never, ever painted over because it contains our children’s height chart over the years. Now, my f- one of my favorites is our youngest, Henry, who comes in at three-foot-six and then again now at six-foot-three. But the other chart, so that’s one chart in our kitchen, but the other chart is our kitchen calendar, our diary. And when our children were growing up and had schedules of their own, this, this chart was the motherboard of our family life. Woe betide anybody who failed to put something on this calendar, particularly if it involved them not being there for a meal or bringing lots of extra people, uh, for meals in the house.

But during lockdown, this kitchen calendar was empty for weeks on end. Previously, each month there would’ve been 30 little squares packed full of meetings, trips to the dentist, sports events, church gatherings, coffee with a friend, haircuts, all the things of family life. But now as I turned the page, I was greeted with 30 white spaces. Now at one level there was so much that I missed, meeting up with friends and family, being part of our worshiping church community, the Crash and Burn that a part of our Care for the Family, uh, tours very often. But there was something about those empty white spaces that I felt was beckoning me, the possibility of space just to slow down, an opportunity to be present to others, to myself, even to God. The chance to be actively still, to practice that active stillness.

And as restrictions lifted and all those spaces started to fill up again, I began to wonder, how would it be possible to live like that but within the busyness of life? But being busy, being busy is an outward condition. We’re fulfilled and we can be fully occupied with things that matter. That can be healthy. And it can be healthy to have periods of time when we’re busy, when we got a project deadline looming, when we’re about to go on holiday, uh, when there’s some other celebration to be planned. Those periods of, of busyness are good, but it can be bad when it develops just into a toxic habit. It can be as if we’re on a, a carousel going round and round, faster and faster, and we can’t get off.

It was C.S. Lewis that said, “Hurry never aids, but it always impedes our work.” And so while many of us need an incentive to get started, the truth is we seldom do our best work when we’re in a hurry. Our best work is done when we have time, time to do it properly. And what’s true for work and for, uh, creativity is true also for our relationships. Hurry causes me to be distracted, preoccupied with myself and my own needs so that we can’t be fully present with others, uh, or even with God. Friendships take time. Love takes time. And our relationship with God takes time.

Now, I’ve often been challenged by the story of the traveler. She was walking in the Himalayas, and she engaged a group of sherpas to help her. And she was really pleased with the progress they’d made after three days. But then they just all sat down and refused to move an inch. She was really frustrated, and she said to the leader, uh, “What is, what is happening? Why won’t they move?” And the lead Sherpa just said this to her, “They have gone too far too fast. They simply need to wait and let their souls catch up.” In his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, author John Mark Comer writes this, “Hurry and love are incompatible.”

He says, “All my worst moments as a father, a husband, and a pastor, as a human being, are when I’m in a hurry, late for an appointment, behind my unrealistic to-do list, trying to cram too much into my day. I ooze anger, tension, a critical nagging, the antithesis of love. Hurry and love are oil and water. They n- they simply do not mix.” And it was John Ortberg who said, “Hurry isn’t just a sign of a disordered schedule, it’s a sign of a disordered heart.”

John: You’re listening to Katharine Hill on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And you can find more insight about overcoming busyness in her book, Born Free: A Call to Be Still, Know God and Flourish in a Hectic World. We’ll send that to you for a donation of any amount to the ministry of Focus on the Family. Support this show and this ministry and we’ll also include a free audio download of this entire presentation. Donate today and request those resources at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast, or call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. Let’s return now to more from Katharine Hill.

Katharine: Now, a few years ago someone came into my life who not only encouraged me to live fast and at speed but also to be a bit distracted. She’s been my trusted companion now for a good number of years. Always by my side, she is loyal and attentive. And she brings me what we, what I want at any time of the day and night. She reminds me of my appointments. She buys my coffee. She helps me choose music. She helps me track down my children’s whereabouts. And during the pandemic, her presence was a genuine lifeline. I don’t think I could’ve managed without her. Let me introduce you to my smartphone.

Audience: (laughs)

Katharine: The digital age has brought so many advantages to society, but for all the advantages, this smartphone in our pocket causes so many of us to live distracted lives. I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a young dad. He had a little eight-year-old boy. He had a busy work life. And he was catching up with emails on a Saturday morning on his phone, and his child came into the room, “Daddy, daddy, can we go to the park?” He said, “In a minute.” Nothing happened, so he came back a little bit later, “Daddy, daddy, please can we go to the park?” “In just a minute.”

“Daddy, daddy, please can we go to the park?” Irritated, he looked up, “Can’t you see I’m busy?” Little boy walked out, but not before, just as he got to the door looking over his shoulder, “You were a much nicer daddy before you had your phone.” Ouch. That dad said that was a call-up for him, a wake-up call for him just to change, uh, how reliant he was on the phone. It’s said we live in an attention economy, so the greatest commodity sought by the tech giants, uh, it’s no longer now minerals or gold or precious metal, but it’s our attention. Those invasive notifications on our screen, usually that shade of red to grab our attention, they’re all designed to grab our attention, to interrupt our day.

Screens are a distraction 24/7, and psychologists have, uh, brought about a term that’s called technoference, technology getting in the way of our relationships. And our phones can get in the way of our relationship with Jesus. Now, the Book of Proverbs says, “It begins with the heart.” This isn’t about behavior management. Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart because it’s the wellspring of life.” Everything we do flows from it. The things we love and pay attention to, they are the things, uh, from which our lives flow.

Transformation is God’s work and God’s work alone in our lives, but we have a part to play in making space for the work of the Holy Spirit to transform us. There’s an old Cherokee story. So, the chief of the tribe, he was talking with his grandson, and he said, “Inside me are two wolves. Uh, the one is good and the other is bad. And they’re always fighting, and sometimes the fight is furious. The one is full of bitterness, anger, jealousy, and greed. And the other is full of goodness, love, kindness, generosity.” The little boy’s eyes grew big. He said, “Granddad, which one wins?” “Oh,” he said, “The one I feed.”

This isn’t a quick fix, but this is about us intentionally developing habits over time within the busyness of our lives that makes space for God. Four things that we can do to help us along the way. The first is to know ourselves. So when our, our hus- my husband and I, um, were in the early years of our marriage, we decided for our wedding anniversary to go away for the weekend. We managed to get a friend to look after our children. And I had a little blue Mini car, and it had a very antiquated music system, which was a, a CD player in the boot. And you had to decide what music, this is before the days of Spotify, what music you were going to listen to before you set off on your journey.

So, I loaded five worship CDs. I thought this would be a great way to start off our anniversary weekend. Off we set and I pressed play. But instead of the lovely tones of Tim Hughes came Bruce Springsteen.

Audience: (laughs)

Katharine: I was a little confused. I asked my husband what was going on. And he had looked, and he thought he didn’t wanna listen to worship music. Out had come all my CDs and in had put his musical selection.

Audience: (laughs)

Katharine: In that moment, I honestly wondered if he was really a Christian. I thought-

Audience: (laughs)

Katharine: … “Why, why wouldn’t he want to listen to worship music?” But my older and wiser self now see things a little differently. That jasnt- that just wasn’t the thing for him. There are other ways that he connects with God. And I made the mistake of confusing personality and spirituality. Spirituality isn’t a one size fits all. We’re each unique, and we each have different ways that, uh, God will speak to our hearts and that we will connect our souls with Him. So, we need to know ourselves. We need to know what way works best for us.

Secondly, build some habits. So when our children were little, Richard and I experienced something that we called a creeping separateness. We had busy lives. My life involved being at home with the little ones. It involved Play-Doh and the school run and the, the goldfish and the missing hamster and, uh, tying up little shoelaces, all the things of family life. Richard’s work was very different, and he, his involved, uh, the bottom line of the finances in the office, building a business, um, uh, servicing clients and all that sort of things. And we stopped being interested in each other’s lives and making that connection. We began to live parallel lives, and the same can be true of our friendship with Jesus. But much of love is the duty to make space for relationship. And a, a wise friend told us, “Put a date night in the diary once a week.” And we did that. And over 37 years of marriage, that has served us well. And we can be as intentional in making space for our time with Jesus.

Number three, we can create space. That means putting boundaries in place. There’s a, a, a good little idea, it’s called parenting your phone. If you’re a parent, you’re the one that decides, by and large, if they’re little, when your children go to bed, when they wake up in the morning. We can be as intentional about our phone. W- we’re in charge of it, not letting it be in charge of us. And boundaries that also give us margin in life. Everything rails against me. E- e- everything in me rails against this very often, uh, ’cause I like to cram things in, but Jesus had margin. Jesus was interruptible. Nearly all the miracles that we read about were an interruption. He’s on the way to heal Jairus’s daughter, and the lady comes with the issue of blood. He’s on the way to get away, get some time on his own, and he feeds 5,000 people. Can we have that margin in our schedules so that we have time, time for those interruptions.

And number four would be become interruptible. So, let me tell you about a man called Carlo Carretto. He, he spent many years as a hermit in the desert praying. And one day he came back to Italy and he, uh, came to see his mother, who had spent 30 years in the home raising children. And he came to the startling realization that she had a softer heart. Uh, her connection with God was better, he reckoned, than his. Now, he was careful to draw the right conclusion from this. There was nothing wrong with his, uh, time praying in the desert, but there was something very right about her time at home with the children. What she’d been doing all those years as she lived an interrupted life with the demands of four children had taught her to be less selfish, to put the needs of others before herself, and to make space, uh, for God. He said he had been in a monastery, but he reckoned she had as well, a domestic monastery.

Now, all the monasteries had a bell. And when the bell would ring, the monks would have to stop whatever they were doing, writing a letter or digging the garden, and go to pray, turn their minds to pray. And it would be that they would turn away from their own agenda and to God. And I wonder, what could be those prompts in our life, the equivalent of that monastic bell that would turn our thoughts to God in the midst of the busyness of the day? It might be the distractions of a small child. It could be an alarm clock. It could be a, a particular landmark that we pass on our way to work. It might be as we’re waiting for our laptop to charge. It could be in the supermarket queue waiting, uh, for another, uh, another appointment. Whatever it is, using those little prompts.

I have a… I often put a photograph on my phone, the wallpaper on my phone. My little granddaughter was quite sick and in hospital, and I put a photo of her on my phone. And every time I picked up my phone, that was a reminder for me to connect and to pray, to pray for her. And as we do that, Dallas Willard writes this, “Soon our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass continually returns to north,” right, in the everyday things of life. So, know ourselves, build good habits, create space, and be interruptible.

As we come to an end, in pursuing this journey of ant to lioness, I decided to find out a little bit more about the lioness, and I picked up this very old, older than me, just, childhood book called Born Free. And it is a wonderful book about a couple called George and Joy Adamson. And they were working in a game reserve in Kenya. And the story is told of how they rescued three little cubs. And two of them they sent to a zoo, and one they raised. She was called Elsa. They raised her in their tent. They… She slept on a camp bed next to them, but then extraordinarily, they were able to release her into the wild. And this is not a book about faith. This is just excerpts from her diary, but I was struck as I picked up, on the front of the cover it says, A Lioness of Two Worlds. And I began to think, “Well, this is our calling. We live in the world.” But Jesus is the one who said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” We live in those two worlds.

But as I turned the first page, it was about to get even better, uh, because on this first page is a verse from Acts, Acts chapter 22. Paul’s in prison, and the Roman officer has discovered that Paul is a Roman citizen. And he’s curious, and he asks Paul, “How can this be? I had to pay a large sum of money for my freedom.” And Paul replies, “But I, I was born free.”

Audience: Amen.

Katharine: And that was where that title came from. Now of course, we are born free. We’re not born free as citizens of Rome but as citizens of the kingdom of Heaven. The busyness of that little ant is admirable, but I don’t wanna spend my life scurrying around just to find my existence. I want to be like the lioness, not because of her grace and her strength, wonderful as that is, but I want to be able to learn to live from that place of active stillness, from that place of connection and intimacy with the Father, knowing that I have nothing to prove. Because like the lioness Elsa, I and you have been born free.

John: Mm. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and what a powerful ending to this message from Katharine Hill, director of Care for the Family in the United Kingdom.

Jim: What a great reminder to stay connected with our ultimate power source, Jesus Christ. That’s the place to be. And Katharine has written a book on this subject called Born Free: A Call to Be Still, Know God and Flourish in a Hectic World. And let me encourage you to get a copy from us here at Focus on the Family, where the proceeds go right back into ministry. Join us in our work to help families thrive in Christ. Our talented staff is working hard to save marriages, equip parents to raise children with a bold faith, to save babies and their mothers from the anguish of abortion, and help children waiting in foster care and so much more. When you make a donation of any amount, we’ll send you a copy of Born Free by Katharine Hill, and we’ll include a free audio download of this entire presentation, uh, with quite a bit of extra content that’ll come your way. Get your copy today.

John: Yeah. Be a part of the ministry when you donate and request your copy of Born Free by Katharine Hill when you call 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY. Or you can donate online at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Next time, you’ll hear Dr. Gary Chapman offering hope and encouragement for desperate marriages.

Dr. Gary Chapman: I do believe that many, many people give up in those difficult marriages, which if they had a different perspective on things, uh, they could be an influencer. It is true we can’t change our spouse. We can’t make them change, but we can influence them.

John: On behalf of the entire team, thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.