A Season of Business

As March rolls around, I can hear the collective groans from my coworkers and I starting. We’ve entered what is affectionately referred to as “busy season.” Busy season is marked by long hard hours and work weeks that don’t end on Fridays. Every hour possible is spent completing the seemingly endless number of tasks that continue piling up without end. Everything besides work is put on the backburner – social outings, sleep, reading, writing the Sunday Monday posts, and time spent in pure relaxation. The season ends, rather anti-climactically, in May or “when it’s over.”

If this were the pass throughout the year, it would be unsustainable. Life is not meant to be lived in this way. But as it’s only a few months of the year, it’s bearable. When thinking about busy season, I’m reminded of Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8.

There is an appointed time for everything,

And a time for every affair under the heavens.

A time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant.

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

A time to tear down, and a time to build.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them

A time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.

A time to seek, and a time to lose.

A time to keep, and a time to sew;

A time to be silent, and a time to speak.

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time of war, and a time of piece.

This bit of scripture often centers me and brings me back to the knowledge that God is in everything and every season. He is in there during the seasons when we have time to sit in quiet reflection in the morning before work, use our lunch to attend daily mass, and can go on long walks to admire His creation after we get home. Conversely, He is also present when two computer monitors don’t seem like enough to manage the morning emails, when our to do list grows rather than shrinks at the end of the day, and with us when we get home only to heat a frozen dinner to slump off to bed. There is comfort it that. He has ordered our lives in such a way that there will be seasons of businesses and He is ever present during them.

That, in part, removes the guilt from not having time to spend long hours in theological study. However, it does not provide an exemption from spending time with Him in prayer.

Yet, He is with us in the busyness.

In an oft quoted aphorism, St. Teresa of Avila said, “Know that even when you are in the kitchen, our Lord moves amidst the pots and pans.”

So that it might better fit the Sunday Monday reader, I would adjust the saying to read as “Know that even when you are at your desk, our Lord moves amidst the excel sheets.”

So, when you’re in a season of busyness, let it be so with the knowledge that God has ordained times for us to harvest. The time when the fields lay fallow is to come. But invite Him into the day. Pray when you put on your make up for your work, say a rosary when on your commute, offer up a prayer of gratitude before you eat your lunch at your desk. He will be there.

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