One day over a cup of tea, my good friend Betty, who's older and much wiser than I am, gave me some insightful thoughts about caring. She told me that when she was younger, she made a calculated decision not to be someone who constantly took on more than she could handle. She said that busyness sends out a message to people that you don't have time for them. The state of being frantic, overextended, and distracted drives people away rather than drawing them in and inviting them to the refuge of your company. No one is comfortable coming to someone when they feel like an interruption. This fear of interrupting feeds into the isolating trends of our culture where no one wants to be a bother to anyone else.
In a world that so often values speed, efficiency, and change over continuity and relationship, we are challenged on a daily basis to consider what matters most. God invites us to resist the tangled webs of busyness that imprison us and make it impossible to respond in love to the people around us. If we want our lives to reflect the truth that people matter, we must live intentionally toward that end. If we really believe that people are important and that caring for each other is at the heart of our call to follow Jesus, we must thoughtfully and intentionally offer people something more.
-- Andi Ashworth, Real Love for Real Life: The Art and Work of Caring
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