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.
I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.
Life is so tough. I don't know how old you are, but I've seen so much in a wink. One phone call and your life is changed forever. We all know that. You better laugh at everything.
To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life.
The poor fatherless baby of eight months is now the utterly broken-hearted and crushed widow of forty-two! My life as a happy one is ended! the world is gone for me! If I must live on (and I will do nothing to make me worse than I am), it is henceforth for our poor fatherless children - for my unhappy country, which has lost all in losing him - and in only doing what I know and feel he would wish.
I am living my real life, this is it. Now is now, and if I waited to be happier, waited to have fun, waited to do the things that I know I ought to do, I might never get the chance.
I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.
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