It does seem to me that at least some of us have made an idol of exhaustion. The only time we know we have done enough is when we are running on empty and when the ones we love most are the ones we see the least.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the glorification of being constantly exhausted, suggesting that true fulfillment comes from balance and connection with loved ones.
Barbara Brown Taylor highlights a societal tendency to idolize busyness and exhaustion, presenting the idea that many people measure their worth by how depleted they feel. This perspective often leads to neglecting personal relationships, indicating that a life solely focused on productivity at the expense of intimate connections ultimately results in an empty existence. The quote serves as a reminder to reassess our priorities and strive for a more balanced approach to life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about work-life balance, I might say this quote to emphasize the importance of spending time with loved ones.
With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one but Jesus to call them blessed anymore.
Whoever you are, you are human. Wherever you are, you live in the world, which is just waiting for you to notice the holiness in it.
Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own. Temple police are always a bad sign. When chaplains start wearing guns and hanging out at the sheriff's office, watch out. Someone is about to have no king but Caesar
I discovered a version of the sinner's prayer that increased my faith far more than the one that I had said years earlier...In this version, there were no formulas, no set phrases that promised us safe passage across the abyss. There was only our tattered trust that the Spirit who had given us life would not leave us in the wilderness without offering us life again.
The abundance of our lives is not determined by how long we live, but how well we live. Christ makes abundant life possible if we choose to live it now.
The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self - to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.
Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.
I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?
Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.
My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That's where I was. We're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?
Many people worry so much about managing their careers, but rarely spend half that much energy managing their LIVES. I want to make my life, not just my job, the best it can be. The rest will work itself out.
... swept into the giddy vortex which keeps so many young people revolving aimlessly, till they go down or are cast upon the shore, wrecks of what they might have been
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