I’ve mentioned before an astute observer who has noticed that when we’re asked that quick, “How are you?” we no longer respond with an equally swift “fine.” Now our instant answer to an innocuous “How are you?” is “busy.” I’ve caught myself replying “busy” to a friendly “how are you?” one more than one occasion and thinking “busy” many other times even if my answer has been a little more polite.

Consider this from a recent Business Week article: More than 31% of college-educated male workers are regularly logging 50 or more hours a week at work, up from 22% in 1980. Forty percent of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weekdays, reports the National Sleep Foundation, up from 31% in 2001. About 60% of us are sometimes or often rushed at mealtime, and one-third wolf down lunch at our desks, according to a survey by the American Dietetic Assn. To avoid wasting time, we’re talking on our cell phones while rushing to work, answering e-mails during conference calls, waking up at 4 a.m. to call Europe, and generally multitasking our brains out.

Our children are lugging home overloaded backpacks full of homework assignments that are often finished (or not finished) long after dance, piano, soccer, gymnastics, tae kwon do or academic olympics. And mothers (and lots of grandmothers, too) are working their own jobs, putting up with their overworked husbands and scheduling the lives of their over-scheduled children. Oh, plus cooking, laundry and housework.

You get the picture, because if you’re like me you live the picture. I don’t know about you, but I am responsible for a lot of my own (over) busy-ness. I agree to serve on one more Presbytery task force because they say they really need me. I stay at work just a little longer because I want to get in one more call or check one more item off my “to do” list – which is always too long in no small measure due to the one who makes it.

So what are we busy American to do? Especially what are we busy American Christians to do? How about take Jesus seriously? When Jesus admonished us to consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field (click here), he was not just painting a pretty picture; he was calling us to countercultural discipleship, to a willingness to put aside the false gods of success and money and to a radical trust in God. How seriously do I take Jesus?

You notice that I did not list Sunday worship, Bible studies, youth groups or missional service in the list of things that keep us too busy. To be sure, the church must be careful about not falling into the busy-ness trap, but church is not just one more item on the long list of options to fill our already too full lives. In fact church is the antidote. Worship, Bible study, fellowship and service all call us away from self-focus to God- and other-focus.

Every fall we pitch our church programs and try to make our bid for a bit of your precious time. Please, this year, place Sunday worship, regular Bible study, Christian fellowship and missional service on your “required” list. What you add from the options list is up to you – but having considered the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, you may find that some of those many options just aren’t very good options at all.