Crazy Busy Quotes

A few months ago, Crossway sent a pre-publication copy of Crazy Busy: A (Mercifully) Short Book About a (Really) Big Problem by Kevin DeYoung. The book became available on Monday.

I know you might feel like you don't have time for another book, but let me encourage you to check out this one.

First, by means of a fun little promo video:


Crazy Busy - Kids' Edition from Crossway on Vimeo.

Second, a dozen quotes to coax you to make time in your crazy busy schedule to read the rest of this helpful little book:

"The presence of extreme busyness in our lives may point to deeper problems--a pervasive people-pleasing, a restless ambition, a malaise of meaninglessness. 'Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness,' writes Tim Kreidel in his viral article, "The 'Busy' Trap," for the New York Times. 'Obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.' The greatest danger with busyness is that there may be greater dangers you never have time to consider." (32)

 "...the truth is, you're only indispensable until you say no. You are unique. Your gifts are important. ... But you're not irreplaceable." (36)

"Let's face it: people feel sorry for us when we're busy. If we get our lives under control, we won't seem nearly so impressive and people won't ooh and aah over our burdens. Many of us feel proud to be so busy, and we enjoy the sympathy we receive for enduring such heroic responsibilities." (37)

"As I try to discern what's people-pleasing, self-aggrandizing pride, and what's genuine service to others, I try to keep in mind this simple question: Am I trying to do good or to make myself look good?" (39)

"What's important...is to think about what really ought to matter compared to what really is mattering. ... We will have to work hard to rest. ... We will have to make it our mission to stay on mission." (57)

"Rather than figure out what to do with our spare minutes and hours, we are content to swim in the shallows and pass our time with passing the time." (82)

"Peter Kreeft is right: 'We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hole in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.'" (83)

"The biggest deception of our digital age may be the lie that says we can be omni-competent, omni-informed, and omni-present. We cannot be any of these things. We must choose our absence, our inability, and our ignorance--and choose wisely. The sooner we embrace this finitude, the sooner we can be free." (88)

"Many of us are less busy than we think, but life feels constantly overwhelming because our days and weeks and years have no rhythm. ...one of the dangers of technology is that work and rest blend together in a confusing mush. We never quite leave work when we're at home, so the next day we have a hard time getting back to work when we're at work. We have no routine, no order to our days. We are never completely 'on' and never totally 'off.' So we dawdle on YouTube for twenty minutes at the office and then catch up on emails for forty minutes in front of the TV at home." (92)

"When thinking about busyness, people talk as if hard work is the problem. But we're not actually in danger of working too hard. We simply work hard at things in the wrong proportions. If you work eighty hours a week and never see your kids and never talk to your wife, people may call you a workaholic. And no doubt you're putting a lot of effort into your career. But you may not be working very hard at being a dad or being a husband or being a man after God's own heart." (98)

 "Effective love is rarely efficient. People take time. Relationships are messy. If we love others, how can we not be busy and burdened at least some of the time?" (105)

"Like many of you, I can look at my busy life and not know where to start. I wish I exercised more, and ate better, and kept track of my receipts, and programmed the presets in my car, and had my files in order, and knew where those little thingies for the basketball pump were, and in general didn't feel like I was walking the knife edge of craziness all the time. My temptation is to tackle everything at once. Or nothing at all. But the best plan is to start with Jesus' plan. ... We won't say no to more craziness until we can say yes to more Jesus. We will keep choosing dinner rolls over the bread of life. We will choose the fanfare of the world over the feet of Jesus. We will choose busyness over blessing. (114, 118)