They Also Serve
And most of the time, I feel like I’m failing on all counts.
Every morning, I wake up with more on my “to do” list than is humanly possible, and every night I go bed having proven it. But instead of simply acknowledging my limitations, I regularly feel discouraged and overwhelmed. In fact, I have been feeling this way so often that I finally had to face a harsh reality. I am a prime candidate to join that particular type of support group that meets in musty church basements. I need to draw my chair up into the circle and when it’s my turn, bravely stand and say, “Hello, my name is Hannah and I have a messiah complex.” But I don’t think I’ll be alone there.
I’ve noticed a certain agitation among women of my age, a longing to do more. We are tempted to believe that what we are already doing is not enough, that the dishes and laundry and school lunches are not “real,” that ministry that is not global or public or exciting (like reconciling races or saving orphans) is not true ministry. We see the brokenness around us. We want to change the world. We are ready.
But I worry. I worry because if this impulse is not properly rooted, it will very quickly lead to burnout.
I've seen it in my own life. All that holy passion and zeal, the joy of finally discovering my voice, of finding my place in the kingdom can quickly be replaced by needing to save the kingdom all by myself. And when I can’t—when I’m busy with more mundane things—the guilt creeps in. I hear a voice saying, “You have so much to do. Don't you dare rest yet.” And “How selfish of you—you live a life of privilege and ease. Why aren’t you suffering for the gospel?”
I grew up in a context that, for good or bad, heavily emphasized what we needed to do for God. We were told to sacrifice this life for the next, to be sold out, to be surrendered, to be on fire, to be radical. And I was. And I am. But the older I grow and the busier I become, the more I believe that being sold out to God means first learning about my own limitations.
In order to work for Him, I must first learn to rest in Him.
Micah 6:8 has become something of a theme song for our generation. “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The cause of justice and equality pulses through our veins. We long to “proclaim good news to the poor… to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
But can I say something? Can I ask you to stop trying to save the world? Can I encourage you to embrace your life of limitation? Because here in the weakness, in the failure, in the inability, He is strong. And here, only in your limitation, will you ever learn to walk humbly with Him.
And it is only when you learn to walk humbly with Him that you will be able to do justice and love kindness the way that He does.
Almost 400 years ago, there was a man who had a tremendous gift. He was a poet and statesman, an active political thinker and even deeper personal philosopher. But then the lights went out. By the time he was 44, he was completely blind. It seemed like a cruel joke--how did God expect him to use his talent for the kingdom when he couldn’t even see to write? “Does God exact day-labour, light denied?” he asked.
The answer he found is one that we need today:
"God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts: who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest: They also serve who only stand and wait."
God is inviting us to work in His kingdom. He is calling us to something more than this world can offer. But He is calling us first to Himself, to remember that He is the Messiah. Not us. And He is calling us to believe that those “who best bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.”
Even if they only stand and wait.
Rest for Your Souls
The last several weeks have been perfect for nurturing a martyr’s complex.
Truthfully, it's my own fault. As careful as I am to protect my husband’s schedule and ensure that he takes time away from his pastorate, I’m not as careful to protect my own. So that when we have several busy weeks like the ones we’ve had recently, I often feel a martyr’s complex creeping up; and more often than not, it’s directly related to the fact that I haven’t taken time to rest.
If you know me, you will know that I am by no means a perfectionist. (If you don’t know me, one unannounced visit to my house and you will quickly agree with those who do.) But despite having zero OCD tendencies, I do have a tendency to be busy all the time. I have a hard time saying no, a hard time winding down, and a hard time truly resting. Multi-tasking is a virtue, right?
Over the years, I’ve had to admit that this inability to stop is a weakness and have had to commit to cultivating quiet space in my life. I’ve had to learn that rest is an act of faith and accept that I can stop working precisely because I believe that God will work for me. What I hadn’t understood until recently—recently being just this last weekend—is that rest is also an act of self-control. It’s a way exercising dominion over your own schedule and your own body precisely because you are made in God’s image.
The first time that the Scripture mentions the concept of rest is when God rested after creating nothing less than the entire universe. Most of us understand that in doing this, He wasn't resting because He was tired, but He rested in order to model rest for us. And yet, something more was happening. By resting--by abstaining from work--God was also expressing a form of mastery, of purposefully limiting His creative power. He rested to show that He is not mastered by anything—even His own creativity.
Simply put, just because He could have done more didn’t mean He had to.
So that for us, His image bearers, resting is not only a form of trust, but it is also a way to reflect God’s own control. Resting is a way to express the freedom and power that He has given us through the gospel. Because when we actively stop, when we purposefully abstain from work, we declare that we are mastered by nothing but Him; we declare that we are no longer slaves to our baser selves. We are no longer driven our desires. We are no longer driven by our fears. We are no longer driven by the demands of those around us. Because unlike slaves, who have no control over their work or schedule, we can rest precisely because we serve only Christ Himself.
And His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
So when those feelings of helplessness, those feelings of being used, those feelings of martyrdom creep up inside you, you must not push them aside and soldier on. Instead you must take the opportunity to evaluate whether or not you have subjected yourself to something other than His kingship. Whether or not you have become enslaved to something or someone other than Christ Himself.
Because more often than not, this is precisely what we do and it is precisely why we don’t rest like we should. Often we don’t rest because we are driven by other people’s expectations or our own sense of perfectionism; and when we are, even our good works can become a form of slavery--with bitterness, discouragement, and martyr’s complexes the reward for our labor.
But this is not the call of Christ.
When Christ calls, He calls us to full-humanity--to be conformed to nothing but His perfect image, to allow His nature to mold and shape our own. So that when we follow Him, He promises that our souls—just like His--will be free from the weight, free from the strain, free from the feeling of being driven like a pack-animal. Instead He will replace our spirits of fear with spirits of power and love and self-control. And in this new-found freedom, when we are no longer mastered by anything but Him, we will finally and truly find rest for our souls.
The Abundance of Leftovers
Thankfully, I married a man who doesn’t know any better.
Growing up, my mother-in-law’s longstanding policy was that “Sunday is my day off.” To hear my husband tell it, she’d come home from church, put a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread on the counter, and be done with it. If they were lucky, there’d be leftovers from earlier in the week. So even before entering the pastorate, my husband had accepted that the best way to spend Sunday was to quickly change into comfortable clothes, race to the refrigerator to get the best leftovers, and then collapse on the couch to watch/sleep through an afternoon of football.
Little has altered for him, and this past Sunday was no exception. While he and the children were changing, I found myself rummaging through the refrigerator, praying that I would find enough leftovers to feed a family of five. Chili from Thursday? Check. Two slices of pizza? Check. One sweet potato and a minuscule piece of venison steak? Sure, why not? In the end, there was enough to go around despite the fact that everyone’s plate held a slightly different, “personalized” version of Sunday dinner. So when we bowed our heads to say grace, my husband--ever forthright--thanked God for “the abundance of leftovers.”
The abundance of leftovers.
And that’s when I understood. Those scattered bits of food--that last serving of chili, the single piece of cornbread, the dried-out tuna fish macaroni—those leftovers didn’t represent scarcity; they represented wealth. So much wealth that we couldn’t even eat an entire meal at one sitting. So much wealth that we needed a refrigerator to keep our food from spoiling before we got hungry enough to eat it again. So much wealth that someone had to invent Rubbermaid and Tupperware to hold it all.
So much wealth that our garbage is better than what most people will eat in a lifetime.
Theologians throughout history have argued that pride is the root of all sin—the lifting up yourself, the thinking of yourself as better than others, better than God even. Pride leads us to all sorts of evil because we can justify just about anything thinking that we “deserve” it. But if pride is the root of sin, ingratitude has to be its first blossom. The ingratitude that says that I deserve better than what I have. The ingratitude that fails to recognize that what I have is so much better than what I deserve. So that when we fail to acknowledge God’s goodness in our lives, when we fail to be thankful, we set ourselves up for a world of temptations.
And yet, we don’t fight our ingratitude with feelings of shame or by pushing away God’s good gifts. After all, the opposite of pride isn’t guilt--it is humility. And the opposite of ingratitude, thankfulness. So that even as we live lives of abundance—even as we indulge in the things that God has given--we do so with profound and utter humility. We do so with profound and utter dependence on His goodness. And we do so with a profound and utter joy in the abundance itself.
Even if--especially if--that abundance just happens to come in the form of leftover chili on a Sunday afternoon.
To Do: Nothing
I confess I'm pretty much an idealist. In my world, if I want something badly enough, if I work hard enough, and if I just commit to making sure it happens, it will. Food, sleep, rest? What are those? They’re simply props for the weak. And yet, what I’m discovering--once again even after several decades on this planet--is my own weakness. I’m learning about my inability to do it all, how quickly stress affects every part of me and my tendency to be really mean when I’m overwhelmed.
But thankfully, this week I re-learned something even more important.
This last Sunday--after wrestling three kids into dress clothes (which included discovering that child #2 cheekily grew out of ALL his pants overnight), brushing teeth, combing hair, and screaming at them to get out the door so we wouldn’t be late (which we were)-- I finally sat down in church. Only to be confronted about thirty minutes later with this verse:
Our pastor didn’t spend a lot of time on it; but the Spirit did. "Hannah, even in plowing and harvest, you need rest. Even in the busiest times of life—the times that would make the most sense for you to keep working—you must rest."
Many of us probably grew up acknowledging Sunday as “the Lord’s Day” but I’m not so sure that an equal number of us grew up with the idea of Sabbath rest. We were not under such law. We were “free” in Christ. But unlike a lot of people think, Sabbath isn’t rooted in archaic blue laws or spiritual legalism. It’s rooted in trust and faith. Because when you take a Sabbath, when you take time to rest, you express your faith in a God who works for you so you don’t have to. And you show that you trust Him enough to stop. Stop all the rushing. Stop all the worry. Stop all the chaos.
And you allow tomorrow take care of tomorrow so that you can do what you need to do most—nothing.
So that’s what we did this last Sunday after coming home from church. Despite having a messy house (no, I mean a disastrously messy house) and needing to have it cleaned by 3:00 the next day, my kids and I took the day off. McDonalds, books, long naps, a walk around town--hey, I even got crazy and put up a tent in the middle of the living room floor just for the fun of it. All in an effort to teach them and myself that God expects us to relax and rest in Him. I want them not only to see a mommy who is driven to reach her goals, but a mommy who trusts Jesus enough to let Him be the One to get her there.
Because ultimately the stakes are that high. While Sabbath is about physical recuperation, it’s more than that. Sabbath is a lifestyle. Sabbath is Gospel. It’s a view of the world that says I don’t have to work because Christ already did. I don’t have to fret and fuss and get my righteousness in order, because Christ already did. I can rest. His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
And just so we won’t forget that, God reminds us once every seven days. Because in some sense too, Sabbath is practice--practice for that long-awaited, glorious day when there is no more work, no more tears, no more sighing. And so we learn to rest in Him today so that one day, we can rest in Him for all eternity.
Winter Blues
It was quiet, dark, and cool. It was lovely.
We human beings sure have a hard time taking a hint. Winter is the perfect time to hibernate. But instead, while the earth around us is shutting down and going dormant, most of us (myself included) actually insist on INCREASING our productivity. Shorter day-light hours? No problem, we’ve got Day Light Savings Time and electricity. Cold weather that invites you to snuggle up in a blanket and read? Nope, got a heat-pump for that one. Now get up and be industrious. Bad road conditions that any sensible being would take as a sign from God to stay inside? Snow plows, four-wheel drive, and tire chains.
We’re really just like children.
One of the infuriating ironies of parenting is that children simply don’t know how to rest. After those first new born days of sleeping for what seems like 24 hours in a row, they come out of hibernation and no matter how hard we try, we can’t seem to convince them to go back. This world is just too interesting, mommy is too warm and snugly, and feeding is too satisfying to be interrupted by sleep. Even if we can eventually get them on some kind of healthy sleep rhythm, when they get a couple years older, they inevitably fight bedtime and wake at ridiculously inhumane hours asking for breakfast.
You’d think that something as inviting, as refreshing, as sweet as rest wouldn’t be so hard to pass up.
But it is. And it is one of the very first things that we adults abandon in our self-sufficient quest for productivity and success. So much so, that God Himself--who doesn’t actually need rest – had to model it for us in case we missed the point. (Which we did.) From the seventh day of Creation, to the Sabbath mandates of the Old Testament, to the promises of eternal rest, our Father has been on a quest to teach His children how to sleep through the night. And just like our children, we have resisted Him, confident that there are better things to see and do in this world than rest.
But just like our children without proper sleep, when we refuse to take His cues about our limitations, we become cranky, out of sorts and nearly impossible to deal with. And just like our children when they become that way, the best thing to do for them is to impose nap time--to force them to rest. So if, like I was, you’re feeling that generally displaced moodiness that comes so often this time of year, maybe it’s time you found a guest bedroom in a friend’s basement. (You can drop your kids off at my house on the way.) Turn off the lights, cuddle up under the covers, and do what your Father has been trying to get you to do along. Rest in Him.
Hospitality: Let Another Serve
I’m a bit of a martyr.
A church pot luck? If you ask me to sign-up for two dishes, I sign up for three and end up bringing four--just in case… Dinner at my house? Expect meat, three sides, rolls, several drink options, and dessert(s). And that’s when I’m rushed. Dinner at your house? I’ll show up with something, even if you assured me it wasn’t necessary.
I’ve always rationalized it by saying that I’m preparing for the “just in case.” Just in case, there isn’t enough food, just in case of allergies, just in case something goes wrong. Just in case. And while there’s nothing wrong with expecting the unexpected, I think that what I've really been doing is setting myself up to be the hero. If there is a lack of food, I’ll come to the rescue with my extra casserole and look down at my shoes very humbly and demurely say, “Oh, I just like to cook.”
And in the end, my “hospitality” can have less to do with others’ needs and more to do with mine. It’s hard for me to let someone else take the reigns. It’s hard to trust that everyone will do their part. It’s hard not to be the messiah.
Maybe you don’t struggle exactly this way. But I’d venture that if you’re human, you still find it difficult to graciously accept hospitality. Like a friend said to me a couple of months ago: “You know, I really appreciate other people helping us out, but I just get tired of being on the receiving end.”
The difficulty for most of us stems from our residual need to prove our worth. Whether we like it or not, we humans keep score—even in our good works—and when we fall behind, or perceive that we’re falling behind, we naturally want to prove our value and our ability to contribute. It’s not that we mind other people being gracious to us as long as we can eventually even the score. Errr,…. I mean “return the favor.” But when we can’t, when we’re not on the giving end, grace can actually begin to feel like a burden.
But what if, like most things, we’ve got it wrong? What if we were never meant to be the hero? What if being a guest was just as much an act of hospitality as being host? Because what if God not only modeled for us how to graciously give but how to graciously receive as well?
Think about it. Whenever God took on human form, you find Him in the most unexpected places. He’s not sitting on a throne, distributing his wealth, or bringing about world peace. No, often the King of the universe has strategically placed Himself in a position to be ministered to. Whether it’s through Abraham and Sarah in a dusty tent alongside the road or through Mary and Martha in the quiet refuge of their Bethany home, our God has made a point to teach us how to accept hospitality.
By humbling Himself to be a guest, He reminded us that receiving grace from another person is as much a part of the gospel as extending it. Perhaps more.
Because the reality is, when it comes to the gospel, none of us bring anything to the table, and none us of are meant to be the hero. The reality is that at that great final feast, at that long-awaited, heavenly wedding reception, we won’t even get to bring a side dish. All we are expected to do is respond to His invitation, wear our best clothes, and celebrate.
So maybe as much as hospitality means extending ourselves, it also means being a gracious guest and letting someone else serve. It means learning to humble ourselves, learning to relinquish our need to control, learning to be honestly grateful, and learning to follow our Host’s example. And it also means realizing that learning it now in this life is simply practice for the next.
In Sickness and in Health....
It’s been rough.
Apparently we’ve been passing it around as a family for several weeks now (this is the third Sunday I’ve been home with little ones) and while at first, it contented itself to drippy noses and whiny coughs, it finally conspired into one massive onslaught. Fever, congestion, watery eyes, coughing—the works.
As you can imagine, when mama’s been transformed into a walking ball of germs, it can take a toll on family life. And while I know we ate last week, I have only vague memories of chicken curry and pasta. What form or shape they took, well… your guess is as good as mine. My mind’s been cluttered too and the normally lucid conversations with my husband have been reduced to grunts and the universal absence of antecedents.
Me: So…mumble, mumble, snort….she should just tell him how she really feels… cough, wheeze… about what he said to her when she wasn’t around. Husband: mmmhmm Me: I mean… cough, snort….don’t you think that it was….. mumble, mumble….for him to tell her ….sneeze... she had done? Husband: uh… Me: But he … sniffle…that he didn’t actually say ….mumble, snort… that she had said when he was talking with her. Husband: “You’re probably right, honey. But I have just one question… what are you talking about?”
In many ways, I feel like I just lost a week of my life.
Because while my children were busy instructing me in the proper way to sneeze (“Mommy, when we sneeze, we do it into our sleeves.”), my productivity has been nil. Writing projects have been pushed back yet another week, piles of laundry have become towering mountains, and Christmas cards have not gone into the mail. Who am I kidding—I haven’t even bought them yet!
And it’s all been very humbling. Because as I stumbled around this last week, barely able to keep our family moving, it reminded me of how vulnerable and weak we really are. And about how silly we are to think otherwise. As this week testified, on a regular basis, organisms we can’t even see interrupt our lives and keep us from accomplishing what we planned--all while there’s very little we can do about it. Medicines, preventions, and immune systems aside, touch the wrong door handle or breathe in the wrong breath of air, and at least for a bit, the only thing you’ll be able to do is rest and wait for your body to heal.
But for some of you, sickness is not simply an inconvenience. It’s a way of life. And while the rest of us may stumble through the occasional head cold, you are sidelined long-term and forced to sit and watch other people move forward, pursue their careers, grow their families, and by all accounts, lead productive lives. All while your strength is devoted to simply surviving.
It must be maddening.
I can’t say that I’ve always been sympathetic to my friends and family who struggle with long-term illness. In fact, I may as well admit the worst—at times, I’ve been downright apathetic. But this week has taught me, among other things, gratitude and perhaps a dose of sympathy. What I experienced this week is nothing compared to what some of you struggle with for a lifetime. And so, if I’m honest, even this bout of illness was grace of a sort. Grace to remind me of my own inability, grace to teach me to rest, and grace to remember to use my good health to serve those who don't have it.
And to those of you who don’t: please be encouraged that this too is a gift because whether you realize it or not, your often, very private struggles are producing “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” While the rest of us are content to make this earth our home and mourn the loss of our bodies as we age, you already know what we’ve yet to learn—instead of clinging to them, it’s so much better to hope in Him and wait for the redemption of them.
Tea Time
It was tea time.
Now to be fair, tea time meant more than tea; it could have been tea and a biscuit, tea and cake, or even “tea” as the evening meal. But whatever accompanied The Tea, everything else stopped. And in those moments, for those blessed fleeting minutes, it were as if someone had hit the pause button on the entire world.
Of course, here in the States we have our own ritual--the coffee break--but for whatever reason, it’s not the same. And I don’t think it’s just about our choice of beverage. It’s a subtle distinction and probably one (like most of my rambling philosophical thoughts) isn’t all that significant; but I couldn’t help but notice a different attitude in NZ, a different approach, almost as if those moments, those minutes were sacred. There, we were not so much taking a break from work as we were taking time for tea.
Remembering this, this weekend as I sipped my tea with a splash of milk, I was struck by the purposefulness of taking time, of setting aside a moment, of hallowing it. And I realized that this, this is how we must live. And perhaps just as significantly, this is how we must rest. Whether it’s fifteen minutes at work or one day a week or a period of extended sabbatical, we must rest with purpose and focus on what is happening in this moment. Not what we just completed or what will come. But what is happening now.
And that takes faith. Especially for those of us addicted to multi-tasking.
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon reminds us that “for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” (No, that wasn’t original with Pete Seeger or the Byrds, but go ahead you can sing it anyway –“turn, turn, turn…”) And yet, surprisingly, contrary to common perception, Solomon wasn’t talking about accepting the cycle of life so much as trusting the One who’s in control of it all in the first place. About trusting that these diverse moments, each with its own purpose, are His sovereignly shaped gifts to be used in the way He intended.
So when it comes to those “time for tea” moments, those moments where your efficiency is stifled, have enough faith to pause and enjoy your cuppa or your coffee (preferably with a Tim Tam). Have enough faith to savor the moment, to rest in the moment, and to bless God for His gift of the moment.
Stormy Weather
A lot of it has to do with the weather. The official forecast is a high of 52 degrees with steady rain showers throughout the day.
And the delicious truth is that I. love. it. I love bad weather—from dreary, damp, bone-chilling days to flash summer thunderstorms to fierce nor’easters that blanket the countryside white---I revel in them all.
I think it’s mostly because bad weather has the remarkable ability to force us slow down, to be still, to rest. And true, not everyone has the luxury of staying in today; my own husband had to head out to work this morning, and as he did called out over his shoulder, “Hey, do we own an umbrella?” (yes, we’re that sort of family). But for the rest of us, bad weather interrupts our plans and forces us to remember Who’s really in charge. Almost as if God Himself were saying, “For heaven’s sake, would you just please slow down? Would you just please be still? Would you just trust ME to take care of things for a bit?”
So in the slug and the slosh of muddy, drizzling days, I’m happy to let Him. And will always consider them one of His finest gifts.
Limitations
If you’re like me, you probably grew up with the notion that the sky’s the limit; if you can dream it, you can do it. You also learned that if you work hard enough, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. It’s only ever a matter of commitment and discipline. And so in the end, we celebrate those who “achieve” success and judge those who cannot. We pride ourselves in our accomplishments and feel belittled and embarrassed when we fail.
But with each busy week, each passing year, each new frustration and disappointment, I’m learning that there is a lot I can’t control. That success and failure are not always a result of what I did or didn’t do. And that the underlying assumption that we control our destinies is an insidious lie.
Because at its root is the belief that we are God.
These last few weeks have reminded me that I am not. And in an odd way, coming face to face with my humanity has been incredibly freeing. Because when I finally accept my limitations, I’m able to embrace His lack of them. And when I accept that all my work is useless unless He works for me, I can finally rest.
Ultimately it won’t change the fact that I’ll continue to dream and work hard to pursue those dreams. It just means in doing that, I have the hope that making them a reality doesn’t depend on me. That it never did. Instead, pursuing my dreams means throwing myself on the mercy of the One who does control it all, has already saved the world, and gave me my dreams in the first place.