The hectic pace of Advent

I was reading in one of my devotionals about the hectic pace of Advent as a call to confession. I found this in This Day by Stookey. I wanted to share it with you as I have felt that push to be so busy that somewhere I have lost some sense of remembering. Here is what Stookey had to say:

The pressures of scheduling, that many people feel during Advent cause us to recall the opening words of a poem by William Wordsworth:
The World is too much with us; late and soon,
getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature is ours.
As we rush from one social engagement to another, as we shop, and travel, and bake, and cook, and decorate, and send cards, and wrap gifts, the world seems far too much with us. And yet, that world is the very world God loved so much as to send Jesus into it! So in some sense the world is not with us enough, if our getting and spending distract us from it.
Ironically, even the Advent tasks of the church can distract us: the many services and the necessary preparation for them, the added social gatherings within the congregation--even these can put us further out of contact with the world God so loves. Thus Advent may compel us to confess:
O Lord, in preparing to see you more fully we have allowed ourselves to be blinded to the presence we are already capable of recognizing. Forgive us for putting, second matters first, for being distracted rather than edified. Remove from us all that competes with your way for us. Quiet us down, that we may be still and know that you are God, that in silence we may hear your Word with new clarity and keep it with new intensity. Grant this for the sake of Jesus, whom we would worship in spirit and in truth. Amen.