SabbaTHoughts
Saturday, February 20th, 2010So, I’m 3.5 days into my journey of thinking about rest - my commitment for Lent this year. To review, I’ve decided to:
- intentionally reflect on the pace of my life as it relates to work, rest, and busyness
- read Buchanan’s “The Rest of God” and other readings about Sabbath
- take at least 4 days off before Easter
- get more sleep (at least 6.5 hours, generally in bed by 11 and up by 6)
- no caffeine after lunch and no food after supper
So, how am I doing only 84 hours into this?
- I’ve read the introductory chapter of “Rest of God” (reflections below)
- I worked 38 hours in three days (Wednesday - Friday)
- I didn’t get to bed on Thursday until 3:30am (but I slept in until 7… pathetic)
- The “evening of rest” I’d planned for last night (reading, journaling, and early to bed) was derailed by a burning smell that led to a decision to shut down our furnace and fill our home with borrowed space heaters.
- No caffeine after lunch or food after supper… Check!
So, I’m feeling okay about where I’m at, but focusing more on this issue has caused me to “face the brutal facts” about how great the problem is…. I mean, 38 hours at work in three days??? And until I counted it out, I didn’t think I had a very busy week.
The book…
The first “ah ha” I had came approximately six sentences into the first chapter. I am busy; I work hard; and it’s made me very tired…. but I’m not getting much done. I don’t feel productive, I’m more burdened by what I perceive still needs to be done than I am fulfilled by what I am getting done. In Buchanan’s words:
The harder I worked, the less I accomplished… My days were intricately fitted together like the old game of of Mousetrap, every piece precariously connected to every other, the whole thing needing to work together foe it to work at all. But there was little fruit and stunted fruit… Here’s a secret: for all my busyness, I was increasingly slothful. I could wile away hours at a time in a masquerade of working, a pantomime of toil - fiddling about on the computer, leafing through old magazines, chatting up people in the hallways. But I was squandering time, not redeeming it. And whenever I stepped out for a vacation, I did just that: vacated, evacuated, spilled myself empty… The inmost places suffered most. I was losing perspective. (The Rest of God, 1-2)
Words I could have written myself (if I were a better writer). So often, in the midst of “the rush” I catch myself losing 30 minutes here on facebook, or having an extended conversation about how overwhelmed I am, or spending unnecessary time on unnecessary details making an unnecessary assignment “just right.” And at the end of each week, I stumble into my seat at dinner completely exhausted, unable to express anything productive to share with my family, and burdened all weekend by the list of projects undone, calls unreturned, emails unreplied, and dreams untouched.
Coincidently, this week in a class I am facilitating for Freshmen we were discussing Gallop’s “Strengthsfinder” and the related theory of leveraging your strengths in life and work. Sitting and sharing in class this week was a harsh reminder of how poorly I do at focusing my time and energy on things that fit me, that strengthen me, that fulfill me. Is this my employer’s fault? That’s who I naturally blame… Ultimately, no. It’s my responsibility.
Buchanan begins teaching how he (and presumably me, the reader) can escape this mire. He does this by reminding us of the connection between our thinking and our doing.
Any deep change in how we live begins with a deep change in how we think. The biblical word for this is repentance - in Greek, metanoia, a change of mind. (The Rest of God, 4-5)
Rest, or Sabbath, isn’t one more thing to add to my life, it’s something I need to learn FIRST. (He calls this having a “sabbath heart.”) Of course, doing follows closely on thinking’s heels. Practicing a sabbath day (“an entire day, one out of seven, for feasting and resting and worship and play”) flows from having a sabbath heart.
The promise of such a practice is exciting:
- It’s the mortar in your joints (p. 3)
- as good as a wood fire on a cold day [did I mention our furnace isn't working?] (p. 3)
- you start to see what God sees, and as God sees it. (p.5)
Lord, change my mind about rest. I’m not looking for a tweak in my thinking but an overhaul of my paradigms. Stop me into sabbath.
Metanoia,
Aaron
Aaron
