When it was time for Elizabeth’s baby to be born, she gave birth to a son.” Luke 1:57

Elizabeth and Zacharias had waited a lifetime for their son to be born. In fact, they were both past the childbearing years. Elizabeth thought the Lord had denied her the blessing of being a mother. Yet God had big plans for them–they were just in His timing, not hers.

What Kind of Time?

The New King James refers to the mention of time in this verse as full time with the meaning of “being fulfilled.” God knew that their son John the Baptist would be a special child, the prophet of the Most High (Jesus), so John’s birth had to be at just the right time, at the same time as Jesus’ birth. God’s plans can’t be rushed.

When I compare Elizabeth’s story to our lives, to my own life, I empathize with some of her challenges. After all, it feels like we spend much of life waiting for things to happen …

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Thanks for listening. May your soul’s meditations be fuel for Spirit-led actions today!

 

 

 

I looked at the clock and sighed, frustrated with yet another Sunday evening spent in a haze of laundry. Socks, undershirts, pants, work shirts, and towels stood in piles waiting to be put away while I took out the last load from the dryer. Eleven p.m. and NOT all was well.

My Sabbath Was Broken

Lying in bed 20 minutes later, I knew something had to change. And I knew where to start …

A few weeks ago, I discussed a niggling in the back of my mind that my Sabbath was broken. The gift of time God had given us with a 7th day to rest just wasn’t happening in my world. I wanted to recapture some of the feeling I had as a child on Sundays: the slower pace, time with family, and a more contemplative approach to the day.

I wanted more margin in my day for reading, walks, visits, or even, dare I say, time to just sit and think or pray. I thought through my day and realized that every Sunday had a common, time-sucking, frustrating activity: laundry. I never seemed to remember to throw in a load throughout the week, so Sunday would roll around and I would be stuck with a mountain of dirty clothes.

The simple key to my problem lay in taking that task off of Sunday’s docket.

I decided to spread that chore out over the other days of the week, using Saturday as my catch-up day. Saturday morning, while the last load or two is washing, I also work on cleaning the house. By the time Saturday afternoon rolls around, I have a clean house and clean laundry.

Slow-down Time

The result being that on Sunday, my husband and I now go to church and came home to tidiness and drawers full of clean clothes — and time on our hands. The first free Sunday, we spent the afternoon on an autumn walk, exploring a new trail and God’s breathtaking creation. I can’t quite describe the peace that having a margin of time gives me.

I luxuriate in the freedom to spend this day more as God intended, not lost in a haze of mundane chores and stressful striving. I know I need to make tweeks to my schedule still, and as I continue to explore this topic,  I will.

How about you? Are you looking for a little margin in your Sunday to help you celebrate the Sabbath? I have a few suggestions:

1. Honestly evaluate your Sunday. What chore is causing you the most stress/taking up the most time? What is the next thing?
2. Can you move the time-sucking activity to another day? If not, look at the next item on your list. Can that be changed or moved?
3. If neither of them can be adjusted, then pray about whether you really need to be involved in this activity. Or, perhaps you’re involved in ministry work and Sunday is the busiest day of the week. Make sure you’re not scheduling afternoon meetings that could be moved to a different day. As some other pastors do, you may need to take your Sabbath on a different day of the week.

What Does the Rest of the Week Look Like?

Most likely you’ll also need to consider your schedule on the other six days of the week so that you can free up some time on Sunday.

Now I realize as an empty-nester, I have more leeway because I no longer have kids’ activities to worry about. However, when our children were home, we made some hard choices. Each child was allowed to participate in one activity besides youth group, and that was it. And that activity could not include travel sports, because my husband and I decided we were not going to spend every weekend on the road. That was not a healthy, sustainable life for us.

If your children are involved in multiple activities that have you running nonstop, it’s time to reevaluate. It is perfectly acceptable to say “no” to too many activities. Prayerfully determine your priorities as the parent and decide how to implement that decision for your family.

Let’s not accept the status quo. It’s time to take back our Sundays. Creating margin in your day just may be the spark you and your family need to breathe, grow, and thrive.

Pray on!

 

Time is an elusive resource. No matter how hard we try, we can’t grasp it or control it or change it.

• We complain that there isn’t enough of it in a day to get things done.
• It flies by when we’re having fun.
• Things can become frozen in it.
• The older we get, the faster it goes.
• It’s of the essence.
• We tell people to stop wasting it.

What is time, really?

The Gift of Time

With the creation of the sun and the moon on Day 4, God bestows upon us the gift of time and seasons. This Genesis 1 gift keeps on giving. We live out our lives within its parameters: seconds, minutes, hours; days, weeks, months, years. Over the course of a year, we rotate through the seasons of birth, growth, harvest, and rest.

But how many of us even notice this gift of time or the seasons that should give meaning and purpose to our lives, both in our days and in our years? Do we fully experience and engage with our senses the passing and changing of day to night, of week to month, of season to season, of year to year? Do we build into our days times of rest, or do the days parade by in a stream of busyness and business, barely acknowledged much less celebrated?

Sabbath Rest?

As I’ve started working through The Way of Discipleship book with a friend, we’re currently studying the practice of Sabbath. The definition states the following: “Sabbath is a specific period of rest from the labors of life for the purpose of rejuvenation and fellowship with God and one another.” Three questions then direct me to evaluate my practice of Sabbath regarding these points:

• my pace of life and its effect on my soul and those around me
• what rest looks like for me, and
• how much time I set aside to rest or reflect on God

As I sat with these thoughts, I realized this wasn’t going to be a section I could zoom through, because honestly I couldn’t see much Sabbath rest going on in my life on Sunday or any other day for that matter. I thought uncomfortably about what my Sundays typically look like. Morning is devoted to church, yes, but the afternoons are nearly indistinguishable from any other day of the week, crammed full of activities, cleaning, cooking, and laundry, lots of laundry. I often intend to slow down and relax, but rarely does it happen.

God set aside Day 7 to rest from His labors. It’s a pattern He means for us to follow that’s somehow been lost in our skewed vision of time. Each day we race from work to school to home to lessons to home and then start the process all over again. Sunday is supposed to be different, as it was when I was a child. Stores  closed. Businesses shut. Families went to church, ate a leisurely dinner, napped, played,  and visited. Somehow from then to now, we’ve shed that tradition and made Sunday the catch-up day. Catch up on work, chores, laundry, with precious little time for Sabbathing.

I’ve tried to tackle this issue before in my life, but without much success. I want to be mindful of the gifts of time and rest and Himself that God has given us. I want to discover how to infuse them not just into my Sunday, but to create mini-Sabbath times throughout the rest of the week too.

Next post, I’ll look at my first attempt at creating some margin in my Sundays.

If you’d like to join me, I’d love to hear your thoughts on time and Sabbath. Just leave them below.

I’d like to thank my friend, artist Jennifer Bubp,, for allowing me to use her beautiful Sabbath collage.

What does it mean to be blessed or to live a blessed life?

I was pondering that myself the other day after reading a section of scripture in John 13. Verses 16 and 17 say the following:

I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them (NIV, emphasis mine).

Jesus had just finished washing His disciples’ feet as a demonstration to them of how they should serve others, when He finished up with the statement that “you will be blessed if you do them.”

I stopped on the word blessed and considered it. I’ve always thought blessed to mean something good bestowed on me by God. But I was intrigued to look at the meaning in more depth.

The first two definitions in my Webster’s New World College Dictionary tell me that blessed means “1. holy, sacred; consecrated; 2. enjoying great happiness; blissful;” That seems about on par with what I’ve always thought.

But to truly understand the meaning, it makes the most sense to explore the Greek word  for blessing that is used in verse 17, which is makarios, so that’s what I did.

I wasn’t disappointed at what I found. 

My Keyword Study Bible explained the nuances of the word in this description:

“Biblically, one is pronounced blessed when God is present and involved in his life. The hand of God is at work directing all his affairs for a divine purpose, and thus, in a sense, such a person lives coram Deo, before the face of God.” The definition went on to state that blessedness also means sharing in the life of God and participating in the kingdom, and it includes all of these things: forgiveness, freedom of conscience, the Second Coming, the Holy Spirit, heavenly rest, and moral and spiritual purity. Even in suffering and pain, we can still be blessed because God’s purpose is behind it, ensuring that God will bring good out of it for us and glory to him.1

That’s a lot of meaning to meditate on from one small word.

Of all the insights the Greek word gives us, I have to say I’m both entranced by and scared by coram Deo, or living before the face of God. That implies so many things. To live before God’s face is a close, intimate relationship. It is comforting to know that God is right there living life with me each and every day. He’s there to guide me, love me, grow me, and comfort me.

It also means that I’d better ditch any thoughts I may have about just skating by on certain issues, actions, or attitudes. I’ve always understood that God knows everything about me, but when I ponder coram Deo, it attaches a whole new weight of intentionality to my life. I’m truly living before the face of God, so I want to do it right.

What does that look like for me?

Well, an initial thought concerns being more purposeful in how I spend my time. Are the things I’m reading, saying, spending my money on, exerting my energy on, dreaming about, and planning for — are these things, things that I feel good about living coram Deo? Do many of them benefit or serve others, like the example Jesus set for us, or are they only for my own good?

It’s a question I need to answer.

Before the face of God. It changes everything.

¹ Zodhiates, Spiros, Th.D. Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible, NIV. Chatanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 1996.

Piles of books. Stacks of magazines. Untried recipes. Unfinished projects. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Truth be told, I have way more plans I want to accomplish and things I want to do then time to finish them all in. I often feel frustrated when I see around me the evidence of my yet-to-be completed projects.

Lately, well actually over the last year, I’ve felt the pull from God to get this under control, to learn how to hone my ability to truly focus on a task from start to finish. It’s not that I never complete anything. I’ve even hit a milestone this past year with one of my finished projects. It’s more that I’m not the best at planning and prioritizing. So, before I look at ways to improve this area of my life, I need to understand what throws me off track. Maybe this honest look will help you too.

Ways to Derail Your Projects

1. Not having a long-term plan. It seems to me that the people who get the most done are the ones who plan  ahead of time. They sit down with a calendar and plot out what each of their major projects will be for the entire year and roughly when they will work on each one. They then further break them down into monthly, weekly, and daily goals.
2. Not allowing enough time. I’m learning that most projects–whether they be writing books or reorganizing closets–take  longer than I think they will.
3. Not planning for the urgent. Emergencies and last-minute changes to my schedule happen more often than I realize. So that means I need to add even more time to point #2.
4. Procrastination. Perhaps a beautiful day is beckoning me outside, or someone calls with an invitation that’s hard to resist, and I put off my priority for the new thing that’s come along.
5. Being overwhelmed by the size of the project. Sometimes I just don’t know where to start, so I don’t.
6. Not having God’s perspective on a project. On the other hand, I also have a tendency to jump right in with an exciting idea before I’ve really hashed it out with God to see if this is something I should be pursuing.
7. Being overcommitted. Impulsively saying yes to too many things. This follows closely on the heels of #6.
8. Not taking my goals seriously. So often, I will stop what I’m doing to help someone else. This can actually be a good thing, but not when it becomes a regular occurrence. As my husband says, “Sometimes you have to learn how to say ‘no.'”

Does God Want Me to Be Productive?

You don’t have to read too far in the Bible to see the importance God placed on doing things in order. God created our world in an orderly fashion, and the universe functions in an orderly manner. Consider the following facts: *We know that every year we cyclically move through four seasons. *We can see an order to how animals live. *God gave Moses detailed directions on how to build the ark and finish the mammoth project of rounding up all the animals.*Look at all the precise detail that went into building the tabernacle. *In the book of 1 Corinthians, God makes it very clear that He wants our worship services to have a sense of order to them when He says in verse 40 “But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way.” *The human body is a masterpiece of design.

It just makes sense that God wants us to have a semblance of order, balance, and thought in our daily lives too.

In the next blog post, I’m going to address ways to overcome some of the obstacles of finishing what we start. In the meantime, I’d like to hear your thoughts on what keeps you from being productive in your days. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks and pray on!

 

 

Welcome to Day 23 of our Lenten Devotional! We are continuing our study this week on the topic of simplicity. In today’s devotion, we have to take a hard look at our schedules. Are we spending our time in the areas God wants us to, or are lives out of kilter? Just click on the link below to read today’s post about redeeming the time.

Lent Day 23, Redeeming the Time

Have a blessed day!

Image: winnond / FreeDigitalPhotos.net