We're all in this weird boat together
"How, then, it may be asked, can we either reach or avoid Him?…in our own time and place, [avoiding God] is extremely easy. Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal." C.S. Lewis, The Seeing Eye
Today will be the first day I’ve really felt the effects of this “forced rest”. Staying at home is my norm and most of my activities can continue as planned, albeit with a little more anxiety than normal. I moved my last two classes before spring break to Zoom online meetings, and while that did cut out about 5 hours of commuting, the extra time was swallowed up with learning new technology and figuring out how to transfer a discussion-based seminar to an awkward online platform. I’m thankful for the options, but it’s been a false-hope to have this stack of books and projects waiting for me in anticipation of a slower life.
My well-being is tied up in being useful (which is a terrible way to describe human beings), and I’m worried about not being able to do the things I need to do. I’m tempted to knock out a zillion projects while I’m stuck at home more than normal, but I also want to be aware that my whole self—mind, body, and spirit—could use a good Sabbath rest.
SHUT IN
I imagine the first overcast day on earth was a Sabbath, the very first day of rest, when God ceased from His good work. The stars still spun a song in the heavens, reverberating a symphony; the oceans roared a percussion of beats against the shorelines of continents; the animals bugled and chirped, bellowed and cackled. But the sky was close, the clouds low and tight against the first man’s skin, and God was not less Himself because of His rest.
Today is a gloomy day and all I hear is the tick of the clock, rhythmically telling me how time is passing. Sometimes when I am procrastinating a Thing, I listen to the clock. Time is passing one way or another, while I contemplate and debate with myself about the next right step. It’s often exercise: I don’t want to right now; I’ll do it later; maybe I should just do it now so I can shower; I don’t feel good right now; I will feel better after I exercise. Ten minutes have passed while I’ve held conference with myself and I could have been a third of the way done with my workout. Time is a tyrant to procrastinators like me, but on a gloomy day time is sometimes a comfort. This will pass. Things will change. The clock keeps ticking time forward.
I enjoy days like today. I am an Oregonian through and through, and seeing the fog stuck in the tree tops brings a stillness to my thoughts. When my world is enveloped in fog I feel close, sheltered, shut-in from the outside world, like a child hiding under the covers.
But the inside world is always with me, never shut out. The inside world reminds me to hustle and work and it tells me that rest is what you get when everything is done; but everything never is. The stillness of thick, dense fog outside does not translate to rest, inside.
BY FORCE
Last summer a local man was mowing his lawn on a beautiful day, one that crawled out of an early morning fog into the mildest of mornings. He ran over a bee’s nest with his mower and stepped into the back door of his house a moment later, leaning on the jamb to tell his wife he’d been stung and didn’t feel well. He wasn’t allergic to bees, but you know how this story ends. You know that a beautiful day can turn tragic and that a good man in his sixties can suddenly pass because a horde of angry bees was disrupted. Gone. No preparation. A whole world lurches and turns and spins out of any control and beyond any well-planned usefulness, and a wife is left alone in a stillness that is anything but comforting.
Any moment can change a life, even on a beautiful day, and we can be forced into stillness by grievous circumstances or government mandates. Rest is not always Sabbath. As Gordon MacDonald says in Ordering Your Private World, “…Sabbath means a deliberate acceptance of personal rest and tranquility within the individual life. Sabbath means a rest that brings peace into the private world…We must accept this peace as a gift and take the time to receive it."
So this morning I make lists and think through tasks and watch the fog burn like smoke from a holy fire, revealing a grey sky above the green of March's grass. I’ve done the preparation, but who knows if I’m prepared. I used to think I could plan my life. The clock ticks. I am inside myself, and the fog of unknowing is an acoustic cushion for every loud thing that will come to disrupt me today. Grief or illness, disillusionment or doubt, even the fatigue of living a full life can be enveloped in the stillness of centering myself in Christ. He is before all things, and this morning I prayed the Lord’s Prayer with renewed sincerity
DAILY BREAD
Jesus knows the hearts of all men, and when He saw that the crowds were following Him after He’d fed them, He said: Truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled (John 6:26 CSB). I wonder if they were self-deceived about the reason they’d gotten into boats and followed Him across the sea. Were they convinced it was pious desire? A longing for the keys to godliness? What can we do to perform the works of God? they asked. It almost sounds as if they wanted the power to make their own bread from what little they had, to have the ability to make an endless supply of sustenance for themselves. A guarantee against uncertainty.
I am the bread of life.
Jesus doesn’t play. The crowd came with veiled requests and ulterior motives but Jesus calls it as it really is: you’ve seen Me, and yet you do not believe. These are the ones among the thousands who had just eaten their fill from one boy’s paltry lunch stuff. These are the ones who watched as twelve baskets full of fragments were gathered so that nothing would be wasted, nothing lost. Maybe they were some of those who gathered the leftovers, and maybe they had tried the miracle for themselves—all He did was take the loaves—like this; give thanks for them—like this; then break them up into pieces. Why won’t it work for us?
On his un-boated trip across the Sea of Galilee, Jesus walked on waters that raged and churned under a black sky. The disciples had rowed hard and not made it far when they saw Him coming, and there was anything but stillness in the boat. Do not be afraid, He told them. Do not fear this sea because I’ve walked all over it already. Do not fear this raging wind because it quiets at My command. Do not fear all that you don’t understand, but also don’t misunderstand that I only came to meet your physical needs. I am more than that. I am the bread of life—taken, broken, and blessed so that you can go and do the same.
On that day when the miraculously fed ones came looking for more bread, Jesus gave them something hard to swallow. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. For the life of the world—I will die. For the life of the world—I will be like bread, broken and given. For the life of the world—my body is food for eternity.
He was always moving his disciples from a fleshly example to a spiritual truth, and when I look for meaning in the world I look for Him to teach me with regular things. “Useful” has to be about things, not people: a storm is a useful example; this bread is a useful illustration. On days when my usefulness feels weighed and falling short, Jesus makes a feast of small fragments. I can be still. I can rest. I can look for meaning in the world and find that God is constantly pouring something into my nothing.
Stillness makes room.
In seasons of pressing responsibilities, I feel the squish of every needful thing closing in on me with the claustrophobic inching-in of a pillow over my face. Choking. Stealing the air I need. The pressure of filling my life too full tempts me to drop all responsibilities, sign off from every committee, un-volunteer myself for life. Of course I can’t do that. Of course I have to learn from over-commitment just how much commitment I can handle. But there are times I’ve prayed, asked counsel, and then made a decision based on those things and found out, later, that this commitment is too much.
The unfortunate thing about future decisions is that you can generally only see the one thing in front of you. Life has a way of funneling a concentration of commitments into one season when you thought you were only making one choice. The future promises you’ll be able to handle this one more thing, but when it arrives you suddenly see an army of commitments all converging into the same season, marching for you, stealing your time and stirring up your stillness into a bubbling brew.
I suppose that while my family is healthy and we have food in the fridge, I have the privilege of accepting this way out of commitments. So many do not. I am missing at least two big events that were important to me and there are a dozen other summer and fall events I’m questioning, but I am home with my family, my schedule has cleared, and the most important things are in focus now.
We never really were able to make definite plans for our lives, even before this current uncertainty. My “usefulness” has always been dependent on God’s grace. But there’s something oddly comforting in coming to these realizations and going through these times together (but isolated)—and I mean the whole world together, not just my people here. It’s weird. Everyone is in this weird boat together, separately. I am praying for daily bread for us, for our friends and family, for homes that were already on edge. One moment I wish we could make our own bread as usual; the next, I’m seeing the opportunity for crumbs to become a feast.
The world is meaningful and still. I hope we can accept it.
