A few years ago, my younger brother shared a piece of wisdom with me that I have repeated dozens of times since. My brother is one of the youngest vice-presidents for the largest investment bank in the world. He is also married with 3 sons. He was telling me about other folks he watches at work, who had adopted expensive hobbies and were living way above their means. They are choosing lifestyles that required more and more success to sustain. He told me all of these things in the context of a conversation about his decision to limit his work life in the name of spending time with his wife and children. My brother is brilliant and talented. The sky is the limit for him in his professional life. He has chosen investing in his family over hyper-focus on his career. The hard reality is that many of the folks who he watches work so hard for wealth and lavish lifestyles sacrifice their families in the process. This isn’t unique to the corporate world. One of the biggest status symbols of our age is busyness. Men often describe their work lives to each other with descriptions of how excessively busy they are. In my years of ministry work all over the country, I’ve watched as parents train their kids to take on too much and stay as busy as possible. I will confess that I fall into this pattern far too often. Working hard and being extremely busy feels virtuous. In and of itself, working hard is a great thing. However, when it comes at the cost of our family lives, it is no virtue. I have never officiated a funeral where the family wept over how their loved one wouldn’t go to work and buy cool toys for them any longer. The real treasure we have in life isn’t in our material acquisitions or even in being the best at our jobs. There is value in being fulfilled by the work we do, but this is not our primary purpose as people. King Solomon put it best in Ecclesiastes, a book he wrote at the end of his life. Solomon had spent his life and vast fortune building cities, chasing women, and indulging in wild living. In the end, he realized that the things that make life worth living are enjoying the work God gives you to do, enjoying what you have, and enjoying your wife and family. He explains that God approves of these things and that they are the most valuable parts of life. It’s easy to allow our perspective to shift away from these things. We get starry eyed over new, expensive things or overly concerned over success. We want to give our families the best of everything. In the end, the best we can give our families is our time and attention. God designed men to work and to enjoy it, but it is not all we are made for. He entrusts us with our family and our highest earthly responsibility is found in serving/loving them.
