Distractions come in many costumes. Some appeal to our desire for pleasure and some appeal to our desire to see ourselves as good people. One thing they all have in common is that they suck up time.
Some friends and I noticed how many of the folks we care about find themselves in debt -not just financial debt, but overwhelming time debt. So many people (especially women) feel they do not have enough time for their families, for their jobs, for their friends, for their church families, for the community, for healthy recreation, for their own spiritual growth –for sleep. They run from early in the morning until late at night, eating the bread of painful labours, with hardly a moment to sit quietly, enjoy creation and just be.
We know about the problem here in North America of the acceptance of living in debt as a “normal” lifestyle. Some folks are meeting all their financial obligations, but living in overwhelming time debt. They simply have none to spare – and you can’t borrow time from any institution after filling out a few applications. When children are grown, they are grown; you can’t get those years back. When friends and family pass on, the time for being with them is gone, no extensions available. So many older folks who say they wish they had spent their time more wisely are watching their own children’s and grandchildren’s calendars fill up to an even greater degree than their own did.
When I returned from living in a small space with minimal furnishings for several months I was surprised by how much stuff was stashed in my house that I never missed. I began to mentally calculate how much rent I ought to charge these things for taking up room in limited storage spaces. Then I quit. It was ridiculous how much the clothes and sports equipment I hadn’t used in five years cost to store. It was time to give some stuff away.
I wonder, when we are distracted by things we are tempted to buy, including houses and “conveniences”, if we stop to calculate how much time their price, and the accrued interest, will suck out our lives. Is this toy worth the eight hours I will be away from my child to earn the money to pay for it, plus the three additional hours to pay the interest charges? Are these up-graded fashionable appliances and countertops worth missing two years worth of reading time to pay for it? Is this ten-day winter vacation on the beach with my wife worth the 43 meals I will miss with the family? Will time spent in servitude to stockholders ever be recovered, or does part of their profit margin include the time I could not spend at the bedside of a sick friend?
Many of us have been distracted by projects that looked like a good idea at the time – like trying to help suffering people caught mid-consequence. How much valuable time would have been freed up if I had learned the lesson earlier that some people’s dysfunction is a secretly prized possession they don’t actually want to give up?
How much time could have been spent on worshiping God and enjoying Him and His creation that went instead to some unfruitful guilt-provoked church program -and another evening away from the kids? How much more time would I have had to learn at His feet, and to love His children, if I hadn’t bought the lie that busy-ness is next to Godliness?
Then there’s the time wasted on covering up stupidity. Sigh. Note to self: Admit, apologize, change course, and move on.
The prayer in the Psalms, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom,” seldom gains our attention before we are of an age to notice the assets in our time account receding rapidly.
I wish I had listened to Mom more, “Ve are too soon old, und too late shmart.”
Oh Lord, how we need wisdom.
Keep your eyes straight ahead;
ignore all sideshow distractions.
Watch your step,
and the road will stretch out smooth before you.
Look neither right nor left;
leave evil in the dust.
(Proverbs 4:25-27 The Message)
He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him in.
~ Edwin Markham
There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is simply to try to get rid of the trial, and be thankful when it is over. The other is to recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing than we have ever had, and to hail it with delight as an opportunity of obtaining a larger measure of divine grace. -A.B. Simpson
For all the little girls -and big girls- who have felt they are not
pretty enough
popular enough
pleasing enough
pure enough….
Winter forces the earth to rest.
Sometimes rest is one of the attributes of God we find most difficult to understand. He is at rest. And He wants us to enter His rest.
To be honest, I find one of the most difficult things to do, especially in crisis, is to rest. I’m not just talking about sleeping, which I am notoriously bad at, but about resting spiritually, like a soothed child in my papa’s lap, trusting him to look after me, and waiting for his instructions. Some of the worst messes I have created have been when I’ve tried to control my anxiety by “doing something.”
Today my dear friend is in the ICU after emergency surgery. Again, I feel the frenzied urge to “do something.” Again I am snapping at my husband over trivial things, knowing full well my anxious thoughts are the cause, and not his human foibles. Again I hear the still small voice telling me to enter His rest, to give my time and attention to the One who loves my friend more than I do.
Resting my heart and mind in Christ, entering His presence with thanksgiving and allowing His peace to stand guard is like feeling the gentle snow calm my anxious thoughts, cool my embarrassing temper, and hush my worries. It’s about trust.
Don’t worry over anything whatever; tell God every detail of your needs in earnest and thankful prayer, and the peace of God which transcends human understanding, will keep constant guard over your hearts and minds as they rest in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)
This song has been going through my head like a prayer today.
If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
Till Eternity passes away
Just to spend them with You
If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with You
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That You’re the one I want to go
Through time with
If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by You
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That You’re the one I want to go
Through time with
God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry
chafe our shoulders and weigh us down;
when the road seems dreary and endless,
the skies grey and threatening;
when our lives have no music in them,
and our hearts are lonely,
and our souls have lost their courage.
Flood the path with light,
run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise;
tune our hearts to brave music;
give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age;
and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage
the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life,
to Your honour and glory.
-Augustine of Hippo
Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.
-Lewis B. Smedes
For anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
(Ephesians 5:14)
I’m not a big fan of Hallowe’en.
Perhaps it goes back to being a parent of kids with food allergies and being what we called then “a health food nut” (before it became trendy).
Perhaps there is some latent childhood guilt about the way my brother and I planned our routes like those clocked shopping spree wins in the supermarket. (They don’t have those anymore, do they?) Two totally full pillowcases each was our usual haul. (Hey, we were good.)
Our costumes then were always homemade, often out of stretchy crepe paper, and had to fit over a parka. Decorations were something, often unidentifiable, made out of construction paper at school and taped to the window. Our loot bags, often drool-stained, were the pillow cases Mom had already rejected for regular use. No adults accompanied us; they would only slow us down.
Our parents didn’t freak out about Hallowe’en. Mom commandeered the apples in our bags for pies, so she was okay with it. They steered us away from the parts of the occasion that mentioned evil or the occult, but by the time my kids wanted to go out things changed.
Then the night of mocking our fear gave way to fear. Fear of razor blades in apples, poison in popcorn balls, drugs in cookies… fear of pedophiles… drunk drivers… actual satan worshippers…
As I walked around the stores this week and saw the decorations around the neighbourhood, I realized much of what this All Holy People’s Evening (the meaning of the word Hallowe’en) has morphed into is actually an expression of things we fear – the opposite of all that is holy. In the way Medieval Carnivals were parodies of religious and cultural restraints, when for one day a year folks felt free to turn their society upside-down, I wonder if Hallowe’en has become the day to remove restraints on expressions of what folks fear?
The fear of death has always been with us, but I’ve noticed some changes in the past few years. Hallowe’en is getting darker. Fewer Dorothys and more wicked witches.
The obsession with zombies lately tells me people are afraid of going through the motions, but feeling dead inside – living, but not alive.
Perhaps this thing with vampires is a clue to a fear of having the life sucked out of one, and then feeling helpless to curb cravings left in its place. What if we also become both victims and perpetrators? What if we become someone who uses other people in a way that leaves them feeling so hopeless and needy that even death is not an escape?
I wonder if a bad guy costume (the pirate, the axe murderer, the monster, the seductress) is about fear of a person’s inability to control the darkness in their own hearts.
I wonder if ghosts and ghouls and witches and wizards are about a fear of the supernatural and the misuse of things we can’t explain or control?
I wonder if underlying all this is our deepest, darkest fear – the fear of disappointment in God, the fear that he is not there for us, the fear that we somehow have to get through the perils of darkness all on our own? (The lack of good father figures in popular children’s stories and films may be another clue to this common fear.)
Fear attracts more fear and more darkness, I’m sure of that. I understand people who want nothing to do with a celebrations of death and darkness and evil and choose to boycott the whole thing. I know some folks who shut the lights off and go down to the basement for the evening. As a person who has had to fight fear and anxiety much of my life I admit I ran scared of the fear of the taint of possible demonic ugliness myself for a while. I had seen too much to dismiss its existence.
But I am reminded that there is no such thing as a flashdark. Light dispels darkness, not the other way around. We can curse the darkness, or we can light a candle, and if the evil one tries to blow it out, we light another one, and another one and another one. Perhaps it’s time to redeem the time.
I read about a prayer request today. It was that time when Paul asked the people in Thessalonica (who were prone to listening to fearful tales that they had missed Jesus’ return) to pray for him and his friends, that they may be delivered from wicked and evil men. He held out a torch of light to them when he assured them God was faithful and was willing to strengthen and protect them from the evil one if they looked to Him and just asked.
“May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance,” he said. Knowing the perfect love of God is the only antidote to fear and anxiety.
So this is the little light I try to let shine: Jesus loves you. This I know.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:4,5)
On All Hallows Evening my house is the one with the candle in the window. It’s a symbol of hope. You are welcome to come to my door. It will be open. I will be waiting and praying for you.
On earth as it is in heaven. Deliver us from the evil one. For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.
Forever.
Charis: Subject to Change 