These are a few of my favorite things...

Sometimes it's good to stop and smell the roses. :)

- making waffles for my family
- slow Saturday mornings
- being domestic at home and letting other work behind
- guilt-free relaxation when I'm under the weather
- messes in our house that reflect lots of life, not just work to be done
- keeping things simple and slowing things down
- posts from my daddy on facebook, even when we are sitting right beside each other
- a giddy mom
- successful April Fool's jokes
- notes from Matt
- being ok with not accomplishing much

Sometimes Sundays are restful; sometimes Saturday are. Sometimes there are no restful days in the week. Sometime there a several. But I can be at rest any day because of the rest I find in Christ. Even so, God knows I need the practical and tangibleness of actual days of rest and leisure.
I'm reminded of a message I posted about this summer.
Jeff Purswell said:

Labor is hard and wearisome because we are sinful. God gives us leisure to point our eyes above, to Him and the peace in Christ. I have physical rest because I have spiritual rest. Let your pursuit of rest here point your eyes to the ultimate rest you will have when the Kingdom is consummated. The restless soul is an unforgiven soul, but a soul that receives forgiveness receives rest. Let our leisure be a reminder of the forgiveness and rest for our souls that Christ has accomplished on the cross.

Am I good at receiving things? If not, what does that say about my grasp of the grace of God? What does it say about my pride? What does it say about the price Christ paid? Do I think it's not enough? Do I make God small and smear the Son of God in the dirt? Oh that I would not! And oh that God would forgive me, for that is what I do. For this too, Christ died. "Why should I gain from his reward? I cannot give an answer." My beautiful Savior died for and loves a wretch like me.

photo: Burano, Italy 2007

P.S. It feels good to write again, with so much that's been going on. It's one of my little ways of preaching to myself. And yes, I reread my own blog multiple times, because I need to remember and revisit the same exact things over and over and over....

A Biblical Understanding of Leisure, pt 3

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
Point Three: The purposeful pursuit of leisure

• Be intentional in your use of leisure time.
• Evaluate your present leisure pursuits. It's easy to let leisure escape the Biblical scrutiny we apply to other areas of our lives. Evaluate:
• Our time
• Given my responsibilities, am I spending too much time pursuing leisure?
• Am I spending too little time pursuing God-given leisure?
• The activities and their effects (this will look different in different season of life)
• Am I refreshed by this activity? (this will vary from person to person; don't judge others by what is effective for you.)
• Am I more ready to resume my labors having done this activity?
• Can I do this activity with a clear conscience?
• Does this activity unduly isolate me from my family and friends?
• Does this activity increase my awareness of or gratitude to God?
• Our motive - Am I pursuing leisure for Godly purposes?

Conclusion:

Keep a transcendent perspective of your leisure. Let your view of leisure be "over the sun," and not merely "under the sun." Leisure and pleasure are not our goals. They are not ends in themselves. They are meant to point to something (Matthew 11:28-30).

Labor is hard and wearisome because we are sinful. God gives us leisure to point our eyes above, to Him and the peace in Christ. I have physical rest because I have spiritual rest. Let your pursuit of rest here point your eyes to the ultimate rest you will have when the Kingdom is consummated. The restless soul is an unforgiven soul, but a soul that receives forgiveness receives rest.

Let our leisure be a reminder of the forgiveness and rest for our souls that Christ has accomplished on the cross.

photo: Joy, by the Conestoga River, 2010

A Biblical Understanding of Leisure, pt 2

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
Point Two: The sinful temptation of leisure

• To idolize leisure - leisure and pleasure become ends in themselves
• Ecclesiastes 2:1-2
• Leisure becomes idolatry when it absorbs the time, affections, and resources that belong to God and his purposes.
• To neglect leisure - for the pursuit of work and acquisition
• A root is self-sufficiency; "my success depends solely on myself." God is completely left out of the equation. To leave nothing to chance is actually to leave nothing to God.
• Rest reflects a trust in God. This can be a particular temptation to mothers who incessantly serve their families but can neglect rest and refreshment. It's a particular temptation when what you are doing is commanded by God. Nothing is more noble, but you must be alert to the dangers of self-sufficiency. When everything is on your shoulders so you neglect rest, you are sinning - depending on yourself and not receiving the grace of God.
• To waste it.
• Laziness is a sin. Leisure is not a sin.
• Empty, sinful pursuits can disguise themselves as leisure.
• Leisure is not "vegging out."

photo: Conestoga House and Gardens, 2010

A Biblical Understanding of Leisure, pt 1

I came across a sermon called A Biblical Understanding of Leisure, preached by Jeff Purswell at Covenant Life Church a while back (CJ was still senior pastor). I listened to it near the end of our family vacation this week and took over two pages of typed notes. It was a very good reminder to me, so I'm going to put notes up from his three main points in three separate blog posts. This sermon was the fourth in a series they did called Sanctifying the Ordinary: Sleep, work, food, leisure; Behind all that appears ordinary is an extraordinary God. I am interested in finding the other sermons as well.

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
Point One: The divine intention of leisure

• Components of leisure
• Rest and relaxation from the toils of life
• We are creatures; God is creator. We need rest. God doesn't need to rest. We need more than just sleep. We need rest from our toils and obligations of life that vie for our attention.
• Exodus 20:8
• God prescribes times where people halt productive activities. Life is not meant to consist of duties solely to produce. God provides us leisure as a gift, as a break from our work. He's created life to be a rhythm between work and leisure.
• Psalm 23:1-3 - "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want...He restores my soul." Does that describe your life on Tuesday at 2:45 - green pastures, still waters, soul restored? Is your soul regularly restored or frenzied? Work is a gift and calling, but work in a fallen world is hard.
• It takes faith to rest, sometimes more than to work. It requires us to trust that when I'm not working, God is working. God remains at work. It's really an expression of humility and faith in God. We make a statement when we rest - "God, I refuse to trust in my labors. I know that my work is important, but ultimately all my labor comes from you anyway. I am dependent upon you, and I'm grateful for this rest." When you stop, you draw a circle around your creatureness. That kind of faith will bring rest to your souls.
• Enjoyment and celebration
• God commands us to be happy (Psalm 37:4, Psalm 16:11). God centered pleasure is not just available, but commanded. This is not just limited to "spiritual" activities. God's entire creation is given to us to enjoy.
• Deepening our awareness of and gratitude towards God
• The pause of leisure clears our minds. It allows for a realignment of our perspective. Severed from God, leisure is a mirage. It becomes empty and trivial. It only leaves someone with a craving for more leisure. But our awareness of God and enjoyment of our leisure is enhanced when centered on God.
• Especially in a culture like our's, leisure (like every other area) is not immune to our sinful tendencies.
• The Church has had really very little to say about leisure. And whenever the Church refuses to think about an area, it will inevitably end up imitating the culture in that area.

photo: Conestoga House and Gardens, 2010

Massively Working

Today at work I listened to a sermon that Jeff Purswell gave at Covenant Life yesterday, called Strength For The Weary. Near the end of his message, I typed out some notes that really stood out to me. It's amazing how God works, because just yesterday evening I was trying to describe to my mom how I felt, specifically after coming home from a bridal shower. Often large, or medium even, groups are overwhelming to me. This can be for multiple reasons, but one of them is because I just can't take it all in. There is so much depth to a single soul, and when you have 40 all together, wowzers, I just have such difficulty focusing when I know there is so much I am missing. Purswell encapsulated my unclear thoughts precisely in this sentence: "God is massively working, and we're all just looking through a straw." I think I would explode inside and out if God were to show me even how massively He is working in a single life, let alone in a room full of people, like the ladies at that shower...and just think about his working in this very moment around the universe.

That sentence was the first I jotted down from Purswell, but I kept going after that, and here is the rest:

Waiting for the Lord is confident expectation of God's action on our behalf. How I respond when I have to wait tells me everything about what I'm living for in that moment. And when I wait for the Lord, submitting to his will, trusting in his timing, resting in his faithfulness, I'm saying in that moment, Lord, you really are enough. "Whom have I in heaven but you, and there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you." ... "They who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength." Waiting on the Lord is not simply for trials . . . it's the Christian life. Every day investing all our hope in him, every day submitting to his wisdom, every day trusting in his timing, every day on our tip toes watching, looking, expecting for him to act for us in his mercy. That's what we signed up for.

How do we know he will act for us out of his mercy? Because he already has. The cross is God's guarantee that He will provide you all the grace you need for your biggest trial and all the sustaining grace you need for your most mundane moments (Romans 8:32).

photo: Cinque Terre, Italy 2007