Living overseas has this way of glomming so many items onto the to-do list, no? 

I don’t just grab a glass of water; I first filter our water, after cleaning the filter candles monthly. I don’t pay our utilities online; I pay at the convenience store, or head over to the utility company. I travel not just to the supermarket, but bakery, meat market, vegetable market. I don’t just throw clothes in the dryer; I hang them on the line and scurry after them when raindrops dot the pavement. 

Life just takes up more space. 

I have rarely met a bored or lazy global worker. Generally, they are not the type watching soap operas and munching bon-bons. 

But I’ve met a lot of tired, even burned-out ones. (Global workers. Not bon-bons.)  

Yet as Mark Buchanan writes in, The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God, “Most of the things we need to be most fully alive never come in busyness. They grow in rest. Mindset of the man too busy: I am too busy being God to become like God.”  

Global work often fueled the Martha side of me, while Mary, the recipient of the one thing more important (Luke 10:41), gathered dust. At times I subtly shifted to self-fruit-production—despite Jesus’ clear reminder to me, “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do”—wait for it—“nothing” (John 15:5).  

Perhaps I’d engage in quiet time as if it were a faucet I could turn off and on: “Ready, God? Go!” Perhaps I equated reading the Word with listening, with abiding. As if knowing about Him could be equated to knowing Him. (I imagine like knowing my husband’s coffee-shop order or shoe size falls short of knowing why his shoulders slumped when he arrived home from work. Do I take time to receive his heart?) 

In all the ministry in His name, was my relationship with God withering?  

So perhaps the question lies in how we best encounter God. Yes, perhaps many times that’s in service. But even a married couple laboring alongside each other needs moments of being, enjoying, romancing, listening, receiving. Are our days bent toward God’s heart amidst all the action? 

Are we people who, more than doing for God, will be people who listened to, and knew Him?