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Book Excerpt 17 Roadblocks on the Highway of Life Foreword Dr. Brian Harbour’s book, 17 Roadblocks on the Highway of Life and How to Move Around Them, is on target in addressing some of the obstacles each of us face in life. These obstacles are real, but they do not have the capacity to be permanent roadblocks in our journey on the highway of life. Brian’s book offers sensitivity to the things each of us has to face. While no person would probably face all of the roadblocks, each of us will face some of them. The great thing about this book is that Brian not only lists the roadblocks. He also goes to Scripture to share what the Bible says about each specific situation. He then walks through the meaning of these Scriptures for the particular roadblocks. Brian Harbour goes a step further in listing specific strategies we can use to move around these roadblocks. I have read many books in which people are able to list the problem and tell how the Bible addresses the problem, but seldom do we have access to the mind of a writer who really gives an application of the Scripture and specific strategies of how to deal with certain situations. This book will not only be a tremendous asset to me and to readers, but it is also something I can share with people I encounter who are facing some of these roadblocks. It is written in a style that is simple enough for everybody to understand, but the concepts are so deeply profound that they deal with the source of our problem. The writing style of Brian Harbour is winsome, understandable, encouraging, and convicting. This book can also be used as a discipleship tool as it speaks directly to people who are on the journey of faith. Finally, it is a great evangelistic tool as it can be shared with unchurched people who are facing these roadblocks.
From Chapter 5: When We Don't Have Time: The Busyness Roadblock In a Newsweek cover story several years back, the writer presented this picture of America today: “We’re fried by work, frazzled by lack of time. Technology hasn’t made our lives better, just busier. No wonder one-quarter of us say we’re exhausted. We need to chill out before we hit the Breaking Point.”1 Have you ever been there? Are you there now? Fried and frazzled by life, not experiencing a better life, just a busier one? That’s an accurate description of life for most of us today. Our lives are controlled by urgent demands that burst into our daily schedules. As a result, we are often exhausted. The Annals of Internal Medicine recently reported that 24 percent of the people surveyed complained of fatigue that lasts longer than two weeks.2 Fatigue is now among the top five reasons people call the doctor. Perhaps the greatest threats to our health in America today are not cancer, heart attacks, and accidents but calendars, clocks, and telephones. We are killing ourselves with our “busyness.” Our busyness not only leaves us exhausted. It also prevents us from giving attention to our priorities. This preoccupation with the trivial prevents us from focusing on the essential. Consequently, our busyness sidetracks us from the main road that leads to the fulfillment of our lives. Or, to use the terminology we are following in this book, busyness becomes a roadblock that prevents us from experiencing the fullness of life God wants us to have. Therefore, we must find a way to navigate around this roadblock. Search the Scripture For the Christian, the place to begin seeking answers is God’s word. Several Scriptures provide insight to help us move around the roadblock of busyness. Let me list some of them. • Psalm 25:5: “Lead me in Thy truth and teach me, for Thou art the God of my salvation; for Thee I wait all the day” (KJV). • Psalm 27:14: “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” • Psalm 37:7: “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.” • Psalm 90:12: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” • Ecclesiastes 2:4-6, 11: “I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees. . . Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.” • Isaiah 5:11-12: “Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine. They have harps and lyres at their banquets, tambourines and flutes and wine, but they have no regard for the deeds of the LORD, no respect for the work of his hands.” • Isaiah 40:31: “Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.” • Mark 6:31: Jesus said, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Mark added this note of explanation: “So many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat.” These Scriptures remind us, first of all, of the danger of our busyness. Sometimes, when we are too busy, we move ahead of God and thus out of relationship with him. But since our strength comes from our relationship with the Lord, when we break that relationship, we lose our strength for facing the challenges of life. Being too busy is a dangerous thing (Isa 5:11-12; 40:31). Michele McCormick articulated this danger in an editorial titled “We’re Too Busy for Ideas.” The busyness of our time, Michele suggests, has robbed us of the opportunity for quiet reflection that is essential to our success in public and private life. We are simply too busy to think. What do we miss when we fail to set aside time to think? Michele answered that question like this: “The best ideas occur to me when my mind is otherwise unchallenged and there is no pressure to create. I have mentally composed whole articles while jogging, flashed upon the solution to a software dilemma while sitting in the steam room, come up with just the right opening line for a client’s speech while pushing a vacuum. These were not problems I had set out to address at those particular times. Inventiveness came to my uncluttered mind in a random, unfocused moment.”3 Being too busy to think is a dangerous thing. In addition, these Scriptures reflect on one of the reasons for our busyness. Afraid that someone else will get more than we do, we are often captivated by the craving for the things of this world (Ps 37:7; Isa 5:11-12). As the old quip puts it, “We spend money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need based on advertising we don’t believe to please people we don’t even like.” Author Juliet B. Schor describes the problem in terms of today’s consumer society. She locates the problem in what she calls the process of consumption: see, want, borrow, and buy. Our inner desires are prompted by exposure to a plethora of things. Seeing leads to wanting, as our inner desires spur us to action. And often we do not wait until we have the money we need before we purchase something. We simply charge it. Then, after having bought something—often on credit—we are driven to make more money to cover what we have already purchased, all the time driven toward more possessions by the process of consumption.4 In addition, these Scriptures remind us of the result of our busyness. The writer of Ecclesiastes testifies that in his day, as in our day, the accumulation of material possessions does not bring meaning and purpose to life (Eccl 2:4-6, 11). Henri Nouwen’s term—“an illusion of immortality”—describes the pattern many of us fall into today. We keep giving eternal value to the things we own and to the people we know and to the plans we have and to the successes we collect.5 But the things of this world are not immortal; they are temporary. I noticed a bumper sticker the other day that read, “Whoever has the most toys when he dies is still dead!” If things become the foundation of our lives, someday we are in for a big fall. Finally, these Scriptures teach us the antidote for our busyness. We see this particularly in Jesus’ admonition to “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (Matt 6:31). Jesus acknowledged the need for times of rest and recreation, because without these times of spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental rest and recreation, the roadblock called busyness will block our pathway toward the abundant life Jesus wants us to enjoy. The proper way to deal with busyness is not only reflected in individual Scriptures like the ones cited above but also in individuals who modeled the proper response to busyness in their own lives. One of the most intriguing biblical examples of someone who understood the plight of busyness and suggested a viable alternative to it was Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses (Exod 18). Jethro is not one of the official heroes of the Bible. However, had Jethro not stepped in at a crucial time, we might have never heard of one of the true heroes of the Bible—Moses. In fact, humanly speaking, we could say that Jethro made Moses what he was. Let me tell you how he did that. Moses was the leader of the Hebrew people, and he also made judgments about all the issues troubling his people. As a result, the Hebrew people stood around Moses from morning until evening, each waiting his turn to speak to Moses. Jethro, who was Moses’ father-in-law, asked Moses, “What is this thing that you are doing for the people?” (Exod 18:14). Moses answered, “Because the people come to me to inquire of God” (Exod 18:15). In other words, Moses said, “I’m doing it because I am their leader and they expect me to solve all their problems.” Instead of being impressed, Jethro responded, “The thing you are doing is not good” (Exod 18:17). Then Jethro explained why it was not good: “You will surely wear out, both yourself and these people who are with you, for the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone” (Exod 18:18). Now that he had Moses’ attention, Jethro offered a solution to the problem. “You shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place them over them, as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens” (Exod 18:21). Moses was too busy because he was trying to do everything himself. That is, he was using the wrong method to accomplish a worthwhile goal. Jethro suggested a plan that enabled Moses to move around the roadblock of busyness and yet still accomplish his goal. And Moses did what Jethro said. We’ll flesh out Jethro’s suggestion as we outline our strategy.
1 Newsweek (6 March 1995): 56. 2 Ibid., 58. 3 Newsweek (29 March 1993): 10. 4 Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 68-74. 5 Jurjen Beumer, Henri Nouwen: A Restless Seeking for God (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997), 95. | ||
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