Modern conveniences make it possible for us to be 'on' 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I can flip open my notebook computer and go to 'work' at 5 AM or 10 PM, right from my living room chair. Cell phones keep me 'in touch' all the time. Airplanes allow us to jump from coast to coast between breakfast and dinner. And the cost of all this convenience? Exhaustion!
The number one complaint I hear from people around me concerns time pressure. Most people blame their job for demanding too much, but I think that assumption deserves another look. It is true that our jobs take a big chunk of our time, but for many of us the exhaustion we feel comes from an out of control schedule. The normal rhythms of night and day and the ebb and flow of seasons no longer force us into down times where we can recharge. We pile endless activities into our lives with no thought about how our frenetic pace of life is effecting us and our families.
Just as our rich supply of food is allowing us to become the world's fattest people, so too, our ability to choose to do so much from the buffet of activities available to us, is contributing to fat schedules and, ultimately, to exhaustion. We are becoming a nation of activity addicts - skipping from this diversion to that, watching a little TV while we surf the 'net, speed reading while we listen to music, cramming in yardwork, speeding through vacations as we keep in touch with the office, rushing our kids through after school activities so they can hurry through their homework while devouring a quick dinner alone, as we talk on the phone.
The one word that we find most difficult to say - to ourselves, to our kids, to others - is "No." We feel guilty if we're not packing each day chockfull of things to do, even growing anxious if we have an afternoon to sit and enjoy the day from a quiet spot on our deck! Maybe you're reading this and wondering, "what world does Jerry live in anyway? Doesn't he know I have to..." Yes, I know that there are seasons of high output when we have to pour it on! I know that deadlines come and unforeseen emergencies throw our best plans into chaotic confusion. However, we can, and we must, choose to order our lives including our use of time. We must take control of our schedule and decide which activities are really important to us, for our kids development, and to God!
When we were raising our family, Bev and I wrestled with scheduling. Our kids pushed to be in every activity, to play endless sports, to burn up whole weekends in non-stop going! We said, 'choose!' We set priorities for ourselves and for them - God and church first, then family, then other activities. It caused conflict. I didn't get to do all the things I wanted to do, but neither anyone else in our family because some important choices trumped our personal pleasures and desires! Today, I do not regret forcing those choices for the one thing we all (our adult kids included) treasure is our 'connectedness,' our sense that we have a life together and that God is the Primary Love of our lives.
Let me suggest that you start to get control by embracing God's Sabbath principle, not as religious law, but a life-giving gift. One day a week, turn off the cell phone, unplug the computer, leave the yard work and focus on things of the Spirit, worship and renewal. It won't happen unless you make it happen! A thousand things will press in to demand that you attend to them NOW. Resist them. God gave a gift to His people in setting aside one day in seven for a break from the everyday work routine. Sadly, today most of us don't accept that gift choosing to live everyday the same. Think about that this week, won't you? Pray that God will give you the courage to take control of the time He's given to you, to know how to make the most of your days, to spend the most valuable resource- time - in ways that yield maximum returns, not just for this life, but for eternity.
Here's a passage that is not primarily about use of time. It is about coming to a place where we enter into God's gift of 'rest' for our souls through Christ using the metaphor of Israel's entry into the Promised Land as instruction for the Christian's entry into a new 'land' of God's provisions. This passage does contain provocative thoughts about what is ultimately important in life. Meditate on it for a few moments before you rush on to other things today and allow the Spirit to challenge your heart with the rich truth. At first reading you might not 'get it.' Go back and read it again, and again, and the Spirit will unfold a rich truth to you.
"For this Good News—that God has prepared a place of rest—has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn’t believe what God told them. For only we who believe can enter his place of rest. As for those who didn’t believe, God said, “In my anger I made a vow: ‘They will never enter my place of rest,’ ” even though his place of rest has been ready since he made the world. We know it is ready because the Scriptures mention the seventh day, saying, “On the seventh day God rested from all his work.” But in the other passage God said, “They will never enter my place of rest.”
So God’s rest is there for people to enter. But those who formerly heard the Good News failed to enter because they disobeyed God. So God set another time for entering his place of rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David a long time later in the words already quoted: “Today you must listen to his voice. Don’t harden your hearts against him.” This new place of rest was not the land of Canaan, where Joshua led them. If it had been, God would not have spoken later about another day of rest.
So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who enter into God’s rest will find rest from their labors, just as God rested after creating the world. Let us do our best to enter that place of rest. For anyone who disobeys God, as the people of Israel did, will fall. For the word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires.
It exposes us for what we really are. Nothing in all creation can hide from him. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes. This is the God to whom we must explain all that we have done." (Hebrews 4:1-13, NLT)
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