Once a week I compile the reflections I’ve offered on Facebook into one blogpost. Here are the thoughts from the past five days:
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Marilee slept late this morning. At 7:30, I rubbed her shoulder as she lay curled up under the covers on her side. When she opened her eyes, though, I could tell she hadn’t really been asleep. She just hadn’t wanted to get out of that comfortable bed. A few minutes later, she had tears streaming down her face. “I don’t feel good,” she said. But she didn’t seem sick.
“Is anything else bothering you?” I asked.
“I don’t want to do the mile run!” she wept.
It turned out that she knew today was the day her class would run a timed mile at school, and apparently it was causing her enough distress to stay in bed, feel sick, and burst into tears.
We sorted it out–I prayed for her and then told her I’d be in touch with her teacher and she probably could just run for part of the time. I told her I would walk her to the bus stop. She skipped her way there.
As it happened, I also read a chapter from Walter Brueggeman’s The Sabbath as Resistance this morning, and the chapter had to do with how intentional, communal, and regular rest protects us from anxiety.
Brueggemann writes about how the first three commandments–which are all about worshiping God and God alone–might very well have seemed to the Israelites like they had a new Pharaoh. Just as Pharoah in Egypt demanded their allegiance to him and him alone, so too God requires worship.
But while there are three commandments about worshiping God, there are also six commandments about loving our neighbors. This God, this “new Pharaoh” is different because he isn’t focused on himself but rather on the whole community, and especially the ones who are likely to be mistreated.
And the commandment that links worship of God to love of neighbor is the the fourth, the one that takes up the most words and draws most deeply on Israel’s history both in believing in a Creator God (God rested after he created the world in Genesis 1) and believing in a salvific God who rescued them from Egypt. The link between worshiping God and loving one another is the Sabbath.
Brueggeman’s point is that celebrating the Sabbath–taking a full day to rest from work–frees us from anxiety. It frees us to trust God. It frees us to operate differently, not in an economy of production and relentless striving for more and busyness and pushing, but instead in an economy of caring for one another and trusting and being vulnerable and rejoicing.
I didn’t tell Marilee about the Sabbath as a way to counter her anxiety about the mile run. But I did think of how God’s love can free her up so she doesn’t need to prove herself in the classroom or on the athletic field. The same is true for me. I can rest in the love of God as I enter this day, free to work , and free to stop working, and free to give to others, not in order to prove my worth but in response to the love that has already been given to me.
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
For those of you who are Christians, do you use another label to describe what type of Christian you are? I used to. I wrote for the Washington Post today about why that changed: Why I am ditching the label ‘evangelical’ in the Trump era
Friday, October 20, 2017
If you’re anything like me, you have hurdled through the beginning of the school year and are close to collapse. Our household has cycled through colds and coughs and a sprained ankle and pink eye (that was me). We’ve started middle school and run the mile and I’ve finished a draft of my book.
We’ve lined up our activities for every day of the week and more or less attended them and done homework and piano practice and edutyping and apple picking. It is so easy to focus on the sniffly noses and weariness and the to-do list that is always too long. They are all little things. Nothing dramatic and certainly nothing traumatic. But they can so easily drag me into despondency.
So I’ve been thinking this week about the little things that are gifts to me: the leaves turning yellow on the tree outside my window, the new planner I got (Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner-I love it), the Nomad Podcast with conversations about theology and the church, coconut yogurt with granola and berries, hot cups of tea, hugs from my children, date night with Peter, lunch with a dear old friend, crisp fall air.
The little things can drag me down. The little things can lift me up.
What is one little thing that is making your life better right now?
(I should add that the photos are all from the summer, but they do stand for things that were making my life better two months ago, which is the last time I took any pictures. It’s been a busy fall.)
