Jesus is Coming – Look Busy

I have a fridge magnet which says “Jesus is coming look busy.” It’s

true that most of us need a certain pressure or cajoling to become

focused.  Some of the big bureaucracies  slip into this

culture because it’s easy to lose the connection between the

paperwork, the client and the boss.  There can be a drift towards making up tasks if not jobs

for themselves. In the trade it’s called displacement activity. The

comedy Yes Minister had Jim Hacker’s running a pointless department of

paper clip chasers: The Ministry of Administrative Affairs.

The Church can slip into this too. Why have a goal when you spend

hours of meetings crafting a policy or even better an action plan? Let’s

 be honest, most of this is filed somewhere … deep somewhere in an

in tray if not in the bin. Do you know the mission action plan of your

 parish or benefice? I suspect few do, if any.

Jesus is coming look busy!  The age of the Messiah,  the blind

receiving their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the

deaf hear, the dead raised and the poor have the good news brought to

them. (Matthew 11. 3)  This is what Christ came to inaugurate, ten

people of the eleventh hour.  Here is normal service and business is

never business as usual.