Can You Push This Button With Your Right Hand? OR How Busy is Too Busy?

 

One of the highlights of our service at Highview on Sunday was "Miss Rachel" leading our kids in that classic bit of crazy called "Hello...My Name is Joe and I Work in a Button Factory."

If you know it, the sing-song rhythm and the incremental frenzy is probably right now ear-worming through your head. For those who don't, basically it's a story song where Joe's boss comes along and gives him just one more thing to do each day, until it's actually impossible to keep up.

A repeated question from the boss is, "Are you busy?"

That word "busy" is often part of my conversations, both with folks asking the question, or, as often is the case, providing me with their assessment of my life by adding that little qualifier at the beginning, "too."

This is understandable, and by now I try to take it in stride. My God-given temperament, energies, and calling combine to keep me either robustly-occupied, or resting from being robustly-occupied on any given day. I honestly can't remember the last time I was bored. Oh, unless you count the teacher's strike in my last year of high school.

To bring this back to Joe's predicament, however, we should make sure that this isn't about who's busier than whom, how much or how little we get done in a day, or even about how well we may or may not be keeping up with all the demands of 'the boss.'

That was not the point of Pastor Erin's sermon, or why we were all joining the children in the cool calisthenics.

"[Christ] is before all things,
and in him all things hold together."
Colossians 1:17

The point was, you or I don't actually have to try to keep it together, no matter what the demands of our life right now.

That's Jesus' job.

Often we think otherwise. In fact, I have had to learn the hard way that the voice of 'the boss' in my own head was actually NOT Jesus. It was instead the voice of my own distorted perfectionism and workaholism. A voice that was fear-driven, not Spirit-led.

Jesus, on the other hand, was trying to get me to rest.
Because He's very competent as His job.
And He loves me.
Unlike Joe's boss, He never intends for us to get into that state where we're frantically flailing around.

Of course, we don't even have to have a lot of things on a list in order to find ourselves in that state. All it takes is for us to mistake ourselves for the one who should be in control of it all.

We're not. He is.

So whatever is on our lists for this Tuesday,
especially if it entails things that seem like they're spinning
in any direction that feels out of control,
I wish us all a button-free day,
to take our hands of that which we're not in charge of anyway,
and let God be God.

HIGHVIEW PEEPS
Our online Small Group is still wide open.
Thursday, February 29 from 10:00 to 11:15 a.m.
Digging a little deeper into Colossians 1:15-20.

PM me for the Zoom link.
We'd love to see you there.

What I Love About Labour Day

It's the Labour Day Holiday Monday and we are here, home in the city, and I am really very fine with that.

There are a number of reasons Ken and I normally opt out of staying at the cottage over this weekend, noise and traffic being just two of them.  But if I think about it, the best part of this weekend for me every year is the chance it gives me to get my house in order.

By 'house', I don't just mean our physical home, but that's part of it.  It's more or less that sense that a new season of work is about to begin, and here's the chance to put everything in place - on the calendar, on my desk and workspace, on the bookshelves and files, in the closets (especially the sock drawer), in the kitchen, out on the porch - and basically anywhere where I will be working and living and moving.  If it's in place and in order now, not only am I better set up for success in anything that's on the books, but I am also better able to handle all the unexpected and incidentals that will no doubt and almost immediately require some time and attention.

While I am a summer girl through and through, I love September for this.

It's like a bit of a reset for the season ahead, that time between summers when 'regular life' and 'regular schedules' set the tone and rhythm of all the good work we get to do.

So all weekend that's been my unhurried, non-anxious focus.  And today I get to just finish it all up, straighten out all the last little things, and then get ready for a very casual meal together with friends at the end of the day.

"Unhurried and non-anxious" has been a lovely theme for me over the summer months.  While there was significant loss, I also had the time and space to grieve and rest and think and write and kayak and gather blueberries.  And be Gramma.  And it was healing and revealing.

A word, a concept, a theme that's repeatedly come up in the journaling and prayer times is "Enough."

This seems to me to be related to a few layers of nuance.  

One, it is a descriptor of my inner self right now.  Here at the beginning of a new season, I am replenished, restored, rested,  I do not have a sense of neediness in my spirit.  What I have is 'enough' and then some.  I am over the top grateful for this, as I can't recall feeling this content for a very very long time.  Past journals (which I brought with me to reflect on over the summer) confirm this.

But the other nuance, and this is more related to Labour Day and my approach to work, has more to do with the lovely responsibilities I have been given at this point in my life, my life's work, and a sense that loving and serving our children in Thailand is more than 'enough' for me to be doing right now.  I experience what the psalmist expresses in probably the most well known of the psalms, chapter 23: "My cup overflows."  

Beyond that, there is more to unpack from all of this.  To protect my "Enough" there will need to be some "nos", and some good discernment to go with.  And my tendency to overwork for all the wrong reasons is still part of my wiring.  But in my own spiritual formation, as I regularly submit all the ways I do not reflect the Jesus I say I follow to the Spirit's work in me, there is a movement on this, I think.  I hope.  

Today I am thinking of all the teachers, students, parents getting ready for a new season of school.

I am thinking of all the pastors and ministry leaders getting ready for a new season of serving.

I am thinking of everyone whose summer was anything but restful, and are heading into the next few weeks feeling anything but ready, and I am praying for you.  I've had those seasons too.  They're brutal and pressing and shows us what we're made of and how sufficient our God is.  

Strength and peace to you to all.