A Closer Look at Jesus’ Daytimer

This is from Mark Buchanan’s book, The Rest of God

…The distinguishing mark of the purposeful is not time-management.

It’s that they notice.  They’re fully awake.  Jesus for example.  He lived life with the clearest and highest purpose.  Yet he veered and strayed from one interruption to the next with no apparent plan in hand other than his single overarching one: Get to Jerusalem and die.  Otherwise, his days as far as we can figure were a series of zigzags and detours, apparent whims and second thoughts, interruptions and delays, off the cuff plans, spur of the moment decisions, leisurely meals, serendipitous rounds of story telling…

• who touched me?
• you give them something to eat
• let’s go to the other side

Jesus was available — or not — according to some oblique logic all his own. He had an inner ear for the Father’s whispers, a third eye for the Spirit’s motions. One minute he’s not going to the temple, the next he is. One minute he refuses to help a wedding host solve his wine drought, the next he’s all over it. He’s ready to drop everything and rush over to a complete stranger’s house to heal his servant but dawdles four days while Lazarus — “the one he loves” — writhes in his death throes or fails to come at all when John — “the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” — languishes on death row. The closest we get to what dictated Jesus’ schedule is his own statement in John’s gospel: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3: 8 NIV)

~Mark Buchanan

Some Monday Thoughts on Sabbath Rest

This is from Stanley Groothof who blogs from British Columbia (BC) Canada at the blog, The 4th Point.   It was written mid-July…

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My family recently returned home from a sunny, week-long vacation at Lakelse Lake Provincial Park near Terrace BC. Once again I experienced how resting can be hard work.  It does not come naturally to me.  I might step out of the office and leave the building, but I’ll still take my work with me in my mind – thinking over sermons, wondering about particular people, planning meetings and ministries.  My body might be out of town, but sometimes it takes two or three days before my brain begins its vacation.  And often a day or two before our scheduled return, my brain already begins thinking it’s back in the office.  Just because we say we’re resting or just because it looks like we’re resting, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are!

Taking a break is not easy.  It means letting go, and I have a hard time doing that.  I want to stay involved (read: I don’t want to be out of the loop and/or not in control).  I want to be continually productive (read: I don’t want to disappoint people who might get the impression I’m lazy).

Nevertheless God tells me and you to take a break, to engage in Sabbath rest.  In His mercy, He does not want to watch us burn out, even if it’s by doing good and worthwhile things.  Our physical and emotional health is important to God.

But I think even more importantly, in telling me to rest, God is inviting me to trust.  He reminds me that the world will not spin off its axis if I take a break.  In her book Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, Marva Dawn speaks of God’s Sabbath invitation to rely on Him, to “let God be God in our lives” (p. 29).  Sabbath rest teaches me to recognize when and where I am trying too hard on my own to secure my future without trusting God or sensing His presence.  Rest keeps things in perspective.

I like Mark Buchanan’s double definition of Sabbath.  In The Rest of God, he has the familiar definition that it is a day, typically Sunday in the Protestant tradition.  But he also defines Sabbath as an attitude:

A Sabbath heart is restful even in the midst of unrest and upheaval.  It is attentive to the presence of God and others even in the welter of much coming and going, rising and falling.  It is still and knows God even when mountains fall into the sea.

You will never enter the Sabbath day without a Sabbath heart. (p. 4)

It doesn’t come naturally (spiritual disciplines typically don’t), but part of trusting God means resting, observing Sabbath – Sabbath moments, Sabbath days, Sabbath seasons.  It lets God be God.  And it helps me be better at being the me God wants me to be.

…Read more about sabbath:  Our graphic (above) is from an article on this subject at Sweet Tea Theology.