The God of Time

So I've been trying something new. (If you know me well, you know this is unusual.) My semester is going to be unbelievably crazy. I'm working full-time at the bookstore, taking nine hours (Greek, Psalms IBS, and NT Intro with Mulholland) and I have a wife and 3 boys that I would like to see as well, along with a few extra things as well. My time has to be well organized, planned down to the minute, no TV, breaks used efficiently, no time wasting!!

But in the midst of all this, I have been very intentional (and believe me, I have had to strongly remind myself when I wanted to get work done) to keep 24 hours of Sabbath beginning Saturday night and ending Sunday night as well as spending time in the Asbury Reader every morning. The times in the mornings have been amazing! It gets me ready for the coming day and I am meditating on the Word from the morning all day long! While I have feared taking a day away from work or study on Sundays, it has been a time of renewal and focus. It really does give me a better focus on loving God and loving the people around me when I do things differently on this special day. It sets my rhythm for the week and symbolically closes the previous week while focusing me on the week to come. The discipline has been an amazing change for me. I have felt less stress and have been able to focus completely on working hard 6 days knowing that the day of rest will come. A byproduct has been that I am more organized as well! WHO KNEW!?

God, thank You for the rhythm of Sabbath and for the chance to meditate on Your Word each day.

Missing the Mist

To live in the moment...

To eat good food and slowly chew while enjoying every juice that drips on your tongue. To sit and watch the sun go down while there are dishes to be done. To listen to 3 little boys laugh as you wrestle with them on the floor while the computer lies open with a half written paper on the screen. To sit and have a great conversation with the love of your life late into the night knowing that the alarm is going to come early.

To live in the moment...

I'm not good at living in the moment. I like to get to the next task, check something else off of my list, take the shortest distance between two points and make the best time possible. I love efficiency! Living in the moment is not efficient. It takes time. It requires patience and trust. Living in the moment is like observing sabbath and believing that honoring God with my time will lead to a better life. Trusting that 6 days of hard work is enough.

We are at a stage of our lives where living in the moment is even more difficult. At seminary, we are in a place where we are preparing for "somewhere else." It is incredibly easy to get caught up in thinking about the future, where we will go, what we will do, how we will get there. But in all of that thinking ahead we are missing what God is leading us to do today. Our lives are like a mist, a mist that I wouldn't notice if I didn't slow down long enough to stare at its beauty.

James 4:13-17
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain"; whereas you do not know about tomorrow. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that." As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Live in the moment with me...