Too Busy
A Meditation for Ash Wednesday
The Rev. Dr. Timothy Ives
March 8, 2000
Matthew 6:1-6; 16-21

This Friday night right here in this room there will be a movie shown called Life is Beautiful. I hope that you have all seen it and if you have not I hope you will come on Friday or pick it up at the video store, whatever I hope you will take the time to see it. I want you to see it because it is the story of faithful activity.

If you only know the title then you will be surprised to find out that it is about the incarceration of a Jewish family in a concentration camp during World War II. You can imagine the dark and horrible reality that these people faced. You can imagine it because one way or another probably everyone here has seen these images. Stark and dreadful. This is no different. But it is different. It is different because the father in the story is determined to make it different.

Actually the mother and the father are both heroes in the story. The mother, though she did not have had to go to the camp because she was not Jewish and had a high social standing insisted on going with her family. She suffers all that the camp is because she would not be away from her family. That is heroism enough for me and if the story were just about her it would truly inspire. But mostly it is about him, the father.

In the darkness of that time, and in a terribly dire situation, he recreates the world for his son. The concentration camp is a retreat that they have voluntarily gone to. They are involved in a contest. If they watch their P’s and Q’s enough they will win the contest and gather a prize of great worth, a ride in an army tank. Of course there is no contest, and there is no prize. It is a ruse that the boy sees through again and again but incredibly with enthusiastic singularity of purpose the father succeeds in fooling the child. There are mean angry men, and the child hears lots of stories, but the father always comes up with an explanation. And the boy believes that even this part of his life that could have been so dark is beautiful.

Is it possible? I am not sure. But it does point to a greater truth that can not be denied. If you believe it, and you give your life to that which you believe, if that belief is of God, it shall be true. What is most apparent in this actor or the most convincing aspect of the character that he portrays is this incredible energy. That is what it takes to recreate our lives in the image of God.

It is the kind of energy that seems impossible in this time because we are so worn out. We are so worn out from just our daily tasks that there is little left.

I read that the use of mood altering drugs to deal with two to four year olds is on the rise. It is not because the behavior of that age group has increasingly deteriorated, they will be what they will be but because parents increasingly have less time and energy to cope with the problems that the child is presenting. We are running out of time. We all feel it. And the energy we need for our children is waning.

I cannot help but think that the guns that have proliferated so in the last few decades are a symptom of the same problem. We haven’t enough energy for moral outrage. And so it goes on. And the use of guns is a simple solution. It sounds strange but it does not take much energy to shoot someone. It takes much more to work out problems.

Could it be that we are becoming less and less civil, less and less kind, less and less spiritual because we don’t have time? A minister friend of mine has a sign that says “If you are too busy to pray, you are too busy.”

It would also be true that if you are too busy to make your life beautiful, you are too busy. Because God gives us all we need. We just need the energy to claim it.

That is why there is Lent. It is not a time for another burden. Rather, it is a time to commit to the things that shall give us energy, energy enough to put your whole life in order.

Jesus on the night he was betrayed sat his friends down, to a meal. Now please understand that this was in the midst of an incredibly trying time. But his life was ordered right. There was time for a meal with friends. It actually is outlandish. In the midst of this turmoil he chooses the simple kindness and fellowship. And he gives that to us, now.

The kingdom can break into any moment, anywhere, under any circumstance. Life can be beautiful. But something else has to be first. It is God. Lent is the time for putting God first again.