Reflections on a frenetic life, Sunday's sermon, and Willard's call to follow Jesus

Sigh. It has been a long time since I have written in this blog.

The trip to Baltimore. Endless walking and exploring for a few days, followed by endless study and networking, followed by collapse and immediate return to doing, doing, doing. Thursday we leave for Palm Springs, and I keep saying, I need routine. I need rest. I need quiet.

And I do. I am trying to figure out how to include that into my days, along with exercise, work, writing, people I love, people I want to meet. How do I live life, meet responsibilities, and take care of myself?

My mind has been occupied by all the things, and when it is occupied by all the things, I don't get very much done, so that's counterproductive. I think my friend Lisa W. would say that I need to take a Sabbath, need to schedule days off. And I do.

Her husband, who is my pastor, talked about living through the highs and lows of life. He cited something some research from somewhere about how life is rarely static, that something generally jumps in, good or bad, that disrupts the general flow of our lives.

He called this alarm. Something amazing happens. Something horrible happens. Either one.

This is followed by activation. The alarm causes us to respond. Fight or flight. Excitement. Dread. Busyness. And we go, go, go, responding to the alarm.

And we get everything taken care of--or at least everything is not so amped up.

At this point, most people just return to our normal state of busyness but the research says what we really need is a time of recovery, a time of quiet, so that we can return to our normal state of life, so we can be healthy.

After point of stress, and even exciting, victorious times, have stress associated with them, we need a time of quiet, time to recover.

Clearly I haven't allowed that. I went from grading, dealing with the stress of many papers, lots of plagiarism, to a time of fun and laughter with friends, to a trip to Colorado, to Baltimore, to Palm Springs with family (leave Thursday). What I really needed, what I really need, is to stop. To focus. To listen to God, to allow him to guide me.

My pastor referenced Elijah, who had an exciting day calling down fire from the mountain and killing a lot of idolatrous priests. Afterward, Jezebel threatened his life, and he ran, fell asleep, and asked God to let him die.

Alarm. Activation.
What he needed was to rest.

God brought food. Elijah ate. He drank water. He slept. He repeated the cycle.
This gave him energy to keep moving and to listen to God.
In order to hear God's voice clearly, he needed to rest.

I haven't mentioned Willard yet, and I think I'm getting to that. This book is all about learning to live in God's Kingdom now, listening to God, truly being His disciples, following Him, listening to Him. We need to hear his voice. We need to celebrate his beauty. To abide in him. This leads to live transformation.

But life, its ups and downs, often disrupt that type of life, so that we forget to keep God in mind. And we don't always take time to rest, to let God restore our bodies, our spirits, our emotions.

Or if we do slow down, we may not allow God to direct our recovery. Eating, drinking (something other than water), binge watching television or books, those may occupy our days as we try to deal with the overload.

Willard says we need to train ourselves to respond, so that our response is automatic, so that we are fully transformed in the likeness of Jesus, so that we recognize how beautiful God is and we long for him, just like Jesus did.

Remember when he had exciting things--or terrible things--he turned to his heavenly father. He prayed. He fasted. He got away. He prayed.

We do that by keeping our minds on Jesus, by learning to look to him. He asserts, "we need to understand that what simply occupies our mind very largely governs what we do. It sets the emotional tone out of which our actions flow, and it projects the possible courses of action available to us" (324).

I think back to when I was memorizing lots of Scripture, thinking about it throughout the day, working to remember, I fell more in love with Jesus. When I read the Bible during Lent, I became more in tune to God's voice in my daily life. Over and over. When I discipline myself to think about the things of God, I begin to see the beauty of those things.

And when crises happen, I turn to Jesus. I turn to my heavenly Father.
And all this takes time. Quiet time. Time to rest.

The discipline of rest, focus, meditating on what is true and lovely.

As I read Willard this morning, I thought about Dekker and how we forget these things all the time if we don't keep them in mind, and when we forget, we allow the kingdom of this world to control our actions.

I thought about Barry Jones's book Dwell, calling us to live abiding in God's kingdom, living out his love and being transformed into thinking/loving/doing followers of Jesus.

I'm trying to figure this out.
I need help.

What did my pastor say we should do when we have moved into the rest phase after a cycle of alarm and activation?

• We should voice what we feeling. 
• We should silence very voice but God's
• We should experience God's presence
• We should get help moving forward 

I think that's what I'm doing. I hope so.