In April of 1981, as a junior in high school, I attended a Together Encountering Christ (TEC) retreat in central Minnesota. That three-day retreat and the subsequent retreats I have worked on have had a profound impact on my life. From developing a better understanding of how God’s love works in my life to cultivating relationships with the people I consider my closest friends, including my wife, I could not imagine, and would not want to imagine, how life would be had I not accepted a friend’s invitation to attend the retreat.

Unfortunately, if I were invited to attend the retreat for the first time today, I am not sure I would go.

Don’t get me wrong. I hope I would say yes.

The retreat is still a very valuable experience and continues to have a profound effect on the people who attend it today. Because of how busy life can get, though, committing three days to slowing down and exploring a deeper relationship with God and with others can be difficult to add to our calendars.

In addition, because technology allows such immediate and continual connectedness to most everything going on in the world, disconnecting from the outer world for several days to focus on our inner worlds could be challenging as well.

I believe the busyness and connectedness of our world is exactly why we should be committing the time to retreats and others activities which encourage us to reflect on our lives and our relationships with God and others. I think Jesus spoke to this in Luke 10: 38-42, in the story of Mary and Martha, when he affirmed Mary for sitting at his feet and listening to him speak while her sister Martha worked.

The mother of the friend who invited me to attend the retreat has a saying posted on her kitchen wall that I refer to often and is the inspiration for this blog. The poster says, “We are human BEings, not human DOings”.

Though I believe we are both, I fear we put way too much emphasis on assessing our lives by the DOing, neglecting the importance of the BEing.

Whether by attending retreats like TEC or just taking the time everyday to reflect on our lives and God’s presence in them, balancing our BEing with our DOing, as the pace of life continues to quicken, is more important now than ever.