It was a busy day.  That’s what I told my sister Christi when she called this afternoon.  But when she asked the inevitable question about what I was doing, I struggled to come up with an answer.  You know you’re too busy when you can’t sum up your day with a few words.  

Mondays are always busy, always scattered, a little of this and too little of that.  Today the little of this was housekeeping, laundry, the much dreaded grocery shopping, cooking dinner, dropping the dogs off for their grooming, going to the laundromat to wash the comforter that’s too big to fit in our washer at home and scattering and watering more grass seed over at ‘Cinderella,’ because round one was either eaten by birds or didn’t receive enough water. 

And the too little of that — well, I never got to our year-end tax review I promised myself I would do this afternoon — nor did I make it to my special “God chair” to just sit and be still.  I had planned both in the early morning hour of 5 am, as my coffee was waking me up to what the day might bring.  Had I got up at 3 am, would I have made it to my God chair then?

Scattering time and my scattering of grass seed reminds me of the parable of the sower, one of those great teachings of Jesus.   In the parable, some seed is eaten by birds, some seed falls on rocky soil and withers from shallow roots and some falls on thorny ground and is choked by weeds.  I don’t regard my Monday doings as weeds or rocks or hungry birds.  But I am feeling a little shallow, a little dry, a little scattered.  I am in need of some quiet, restorative be-still time with God.

So first things first.  Tomorrow I’m going back to the basics and scatter time in my God chair first.  With a cup of coffee, of course.