In the last month or so, quite a few people have pestered me, people back home saying, “why don’t he write?” Yesterday, it reached a new peak. I was bluntly informed that I had an extra day off and that I ought to put it to good use. What on earth was I doing?
My response is simply this: The good Lord ordained that, one day out of every seven, you should rest. Furthermore, He insisted that every seventh year be a year of rest. Even beyond that, he said that every fiftieth year should contain an additional year of no work whatsoever. This means that fully 14% of each year should be spent doing no work. Beyond that, out of every fifty years of your life, a little more than ¼ of it should be spent accomplishing absolutely nothing whatsoever. And that’s not including getting enough sleep at night.
God is very serious about this. Jeremiah said that the Babylonian captivity would last 70 years to make up for the period of 450 years or so previously where nobody took a break. That is to say, God is serious about this resting thing, even if we aren’t. And if you don’t rest of your own accord, He’ll find a way to make you rest, and you probably won’t like it. I prefer to take the “fall on the rock and be broken” method, rather than waiting ‘till the rock falls on me.
All that to say, what have I been doing the last few months? Well, the first part I was being run ragged by work and school and church all demanding more from me that I was fully prepared to give. The second part was spent recovering therefrom.
First the news: I finished my application, including the marvelously abridged 2-page spiritual autobiography, which will be posted as soon as a get a round tuit that lets me do some tweaking for the web. I got accepted to school (miraculously, since it was within days of the first session of the last possible classes I could enroll to).
I also got inducted to teaching the jr. and sr. high Sunday school at church. I want to say induced, but nobody will let me. Either way, as Dr. McCoy says, “They drafted me.” I didn’t really want to, but then I prayed about it and got told to go ahead, and it has been quite the roller coaster ride ever since. I gave up on using the official (kind of stupid) Sunday school lesson book after about the 3rd week. I think it was the lesson that included “the only true prophets of God are 100% accurate all the time. Everybody else is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, attempting to drag your soul to hell,” that pushed me over the edge. I can quote scriptures that disprove that. I read the lesson 30 minutes before I was supposed to teach, and said, “I can’t say that. I don’t even believe that!” So I gave them the world’s shortest evangelism message ever taught instead. I had their attention for a full 30 minutes (still my greatest record yet). Since then, I’ve been making my own lessons up, and I’ve been much more successful. I haven’t quite got the hang of teaching yet—one day I’ll aim too high, the next, too low, the third day I manage to hit the left fielder who is actually standing behind me—but I’m getting there.
At work, we’ve gone through probably three crises since I last wrote. Business has bottomed out for the mortgage industry… people have been fired, people who probably should have been fired haven’t been… I almost got hired (but then people who probably should have been fired weren’t)… My boss had jury duty and I had to manage the whole dang office while she was gone (all this while not actually being hired, mind you). So, lots of over time (which is good), and little rest (which is bad), and no real job (which is really really annoying).
So I finally came to this quiet open place and I said “I’m sorry. This sheep is munching right here until the shepherd moves me on. My experience has been, consistently, that when I try to accomplish something out of a sense of impending doom, the work is shoddy, half-done, and generally worthless. However, if I am already rested, I find that it is already within me to accomplish something, and the work gets done with surprising ease. That is to say, almost always, it’s better to go ahead and rest before attempting to meet that line.
Yesterday was a great boon to me. It allowed me to finally get caught up on my rest, so that today I’m finally ready to accomplish something. I know this because at work today, around three o’clock, my entire Sunday school lesson popped into my head. (Hopefully you’ll see that tomorrow, since the news here is already getting kind of long.) Already, sitting in my place of rest, I can see another line looming on the horizon: I have two 6-page informal papers due in two weeks, and I haven’t done anything but the preliminary reading. But, I know my deliverer is coming (yes, my deliverer draweth nigh…), and He will be sure to carry me, as long as I lean on Him.
Blessings everybody! (and don’t complain so much. Gee…)
KB
neumatikos 