Most people feel frazzled and overwhelmed much of the time. We're distracted and preoccupied in the same sorts of ways--struggling under a crushing weight of work, family, exercise, bills, church, school, friends, and a barrage of requests, demands, and desires. It's safe to say that on a typical day for most of us, our responsibilities, requirements, and ambitions add upto more than we can handle, whether we admit this or not. THE REAL THREAT The biggest dangers arising from this hectic and frustrating modern life aren't what we might expect. The most serious threats are spiritual. When we're crazy busy, we put our souls at risk. Few of us are as safe as we may think. An immediate and obvious spiritual threat is that busyness can ruin our joy. When we're frantic and frenzied, we're more prone to anxiety, resentment, impatience, and irritability. Busyness also robs spiritual vitality from our hearts, like seed-growth choked out by thorns in Jesus's parable in Mark 4. Those thorns, he said, include "the cares of the world" (Mark 4:19). Another danger is in how busyness covers up the rot in our souls. As Christians, we ought to understand deep down that the problem with extreme busyness isn't just with our schedules or the world's complexity--something isn't right with us. The chaos is at least partly self-created. Things aren't as they ought to be because we aren't what we should be. ROOTED IN PRIDE Our understanding of busyness must start with the one sin that begets so many others: pride. We're busy because we try to do too many things; we do too many things because we say yes to too many people. We say yes because we want these people to like us and pat our back; we fear their disapproval. Busyness also springs from such prideful factors as our tendency to overestimate our importance, our ambition to prove ourselves, or poor planning resulting from our refusal to seek help. How can we tell when pride has made us frantic and overwhelmed? Here's a self-diagnostic question you may find helpful: Am I trying to do good--or to make myself look good? WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT? For some people, because of pride as well as other reasons, opportunities we encounter often feel like obligations. We end up trying to do what God doesn't expect us to do. Even Jesus in his life on earth didn't meet every need coming his way. He didn't try doing it all. He did, however, do everything God asked him to. Jesus stayed resolutely on mission. He was busy, but never distracted b