Work, rest, play
Play Cliff - devotional
classic. Guess the theme. Holidays, holy days, days "set
apart".
Marie Antoinette cartoon.
What best describes your
feelings as you begin this summer holiday or your retirement?
Thank goodness - I can
relax!
Hurrah - six weeks with the
kids!
Oh no, six weeks with the
kids!
Now I can recover from work
so that I'll be fit enough to go back again.
What am I going to do with
all that time?
Great - now I can get all
those things done I have been meaning to do!
To be honest, most of us
have mixed feelings about our holidays, and about the place they should play in
our lives. They are either too long,
too short, too busy, too empty. We cannot
get all the things done we wanted to, or we feel that we haven't had enough
time to rest. For some of us, it's a
relief to get back to work. Now I
realize this isn't true for everyone, but retirement too can seem like a big
unknown, stretching out in front of us indefinitely, all those days to fill up.
So the question I want to
look at today is what does God want us to do with the time he's given us, and
what should be our attitude to it?
I'm going to have three
sections, and after each one I want you to jot down what you can remember I
have said. So to find out what the first
section is, I need to look in my rucksack. (Take out hammer)
Work. Before we look at holidays, we need to
understand the its place in our lives.
God made us to work. He worked
himself, creatively, and he set the task for us to look after his creation. We are made in his image, and just as he was
fulfilled in his creativity, we are as well.
The New Testament tells us to use the talents, including our skills and
our time, and Paul in Ephesians 4,28 encourages people to engage in useful
activity. "Let thieves labour and
work honestly with their hands..."
But work can so easily
become spoilt by two lies.
The first lie is that
"The slower day is coming..." (Put OHP up) The lie that says,
"I am working hard, so that I can make money to provide for my family so
that eventually, when we've got everything we need, we can enjoy time together,
and I can sit back and enjoy life."
There's a story in the bible about the man who stores up his treasure
for the slower day, and God finally calls him a fool. Parents, who genuinely want the best for their kids are
especially prone to falling into this trap.
Yet we have to ask ourselves whether our busy lifestyles do give our
children what they really need from us.
There's a song called "The Cat's in the Cradle" about a boy
who every day asked his father to spend time with him:
When you comin' home dad?
I don't know when
but we'll get together then-
you know, we'll have a good
time then.
But the father is a busy
man: "There are planes to catch and bills to pay." As his child gets older, he says,
"Thanks for the ball, Dad, C'mon let's play." And the father keeps on promising that very
soon they will have the time, the quality of life that he's working for,
together. And then suddenly the boy is
a man. Now the father has time, but the
door is closed.
"Well, he came home
from college just the other day,
so much like a man I just
had to say,
"Son, I'm proud of you,
can you sit for a while?"
He shook his head and said
with a smile-
"What I'd really like,
Dad, is to borrow the car keys,
see you later, can I have
them please?"
"When you comin' home
son?"
"I don't know when,
but we'll get together then,
you know, we'll have a good
time then.""
It's so easy to sacrifice
the things that we know to be really important on the altar of work, or plain
busyness. But we need to remember the
old saying that there's noone on their deathbed who says, "I wish I'd
spent more time at the office."
The second lie about work is
that "You are what you do." (Put
OHP up) What's the second question you ask someone you've just met after
their name etc? We so often get our
sense of worth, of status, from the job we do.
And yet sometimes the reality of the status we are working for, if we
step back and look at it, can seem slightly ridiculous. (Show Larson cartoon) And yet this is not how God defines us. We are fundamentally not bankers or teachers
or doctors, but we are the beloved children of God. It is from this sense of being his children that God wants us to
draw our identity. We don't work to be
accepted, or to find our ultimate meaning in life, but we work because we have
already been accepted by his grace, and we want to fulfil his purposes in his
creation.
If you really need something
to keep you busy this holiday, then I want to recommend that you read this
book, "Live it up!" by Tom Sine.
Write down something that
you remember.
My second word from the
rucksack - rest.
Are you going to have a rest
this holiday? God rested, and he
commanded his chosen people to do so.
The people of Israel's life was a rhythm of work and rest. They were commanded to rest every Sabbath,
they gathered together three times a year to celebrate God's goodness, they
held festivals every seven years when the land would lie fallow, and every 50th
year they were commanded to have a Jubilee.
Work and rest were as important as the other. Rest is a gift from God as valuable as any human achievement. (Put OHP up) Just think, God wants you to have holidays
and to be retired as much as he wants you to work. I was struck by what Tim Marks said when he came, that we are
called to be unbusy in a frantic world.
Called. Our human calling involves
work and rest.
But what is rest? The absence of doing work? My suspicion is that true rest is more than
physical, and that it has to be sought out.
It has to be planned into our diaries.
Ruth and I plan a romantic evening every two weeks. It takes the spontaneity out of romance, but
at least we know it's going to happen.
Let's look at the language of Psalm 23 again. It's so familiar a poem, but for a lot of us, it's an unfamiliar
experience. "He makes me lie down
in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my
soul." Isn't true rest being in
the presence of God, and knowing his peace?
Isn't that the real rest we need?
But to find this rest we
need solitude. We need to spend
precious time in the presence of God, casting our cares on him, allowing him to
transform our perspective, being before him with no other agenda than experiencing
his love. We need to get to the place
where we can be with God in the same way that a small child curls up on its
mother. I remember Desmond Tutu saying
that he spends an hour in prayer in the early mornings curled up like a foetus
in the presence of God, allowing God's arms to reach around him. We sang a song on Wednesday which expressed
this well, "I want to be out of my depth in your love." To rest means to be rest-ored. If we are going to allow God to restore us
in our holiday, in our daily lives, then we will need the discipline to set
aside time for him alone. This is a
hard discipline to follow. (Read Nouwen
p14 - solitude)
Are we going to set aside
time to really rest this holiday?
Writing exercise.
My final word - play.
Have you ever wondered what
life for Adam and Eve was like before the serpent came along? What did God intend for them to do all
day? Did they ever question themselves
about what they were doing? And have
you ever thought about what we are going to be doing in heaven, when we won't
have any jobs to go to?
I'll tell you one person who
has no trouble with questions like these, and that's my son John. He doesn't ask himself whether building
endless towers with Duplo and knocking them down again is fulfilling the
vocation God has for him, or whether reading the same book over and over again
is useful or not. His mission in life
is to play - there are no philosophical questions about it. And I get a curious sense of fulfilment when
I join him.
I believe that in many ways
God's purpose for us is more to play, to celebrate, and to enjoy life, than to
achieve things or to work. (Put OHP
up) The Westminster Catechism says that the "chief and and duty of man
is to love God and enjoy him forever."
We often say that we are trying to love him, but how much are we aware
that we are meant to enjoy him as well?
The people of Israel had an endless number of festivals and celebrations
built into their year, but we almost need to be reminded to do it.
Wisdom is portrayed as a person in the book of Proverbs, chapter 8, who was there when the Lord was beginning his creation. Some translations say he was like a master worker, but there is an alternative - that he was like a little child, who was "daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in the human race."
Do we believe that this is
what God wants us to do? Is this true
wisdom? To be before God like a child,
rejoicing before him, in his inhabited world, in the human race? Was this what Adam and Eve were really
created for?
If it's true that God wants
us to play, to celebrate the mysteries of life, then how can we start doing
it? How can we really celebrate, in the
middle of the joy and pain of life, the reality of God in our lives? You know, the kingdom of heaven is described
as being like a party, a big banquet.
Verse 5 of Psalm 23 says God prepares a table before us...our cup overflows. We are meant to be getting into
practice! Here are a few suggestions: I'll take my cue from this verse in Proverbs.
Be before God like a little
child - (Put OHP up) do things for the sake of it this holiday. Enjoy games; go round to your neighbours
with a surprise bottle of wine; plan a service and a meal to thank God for the
holiday with some friends;
send someone who isn't
expecting it a present you've made them; sing songs which you haven't sung for
ages; take an elderly neighbour out for a picnic and get them playing.
Rejoice before him in his
inhabited world: (Put OHP
up) go for walks in beautiful places; spend two hours outside telling God
how wonderful he is; take your family on mystery trips; build a fire in the
woods with some friends and thank God for being outside; read about other
countries, make collages from things you have collected outside, go and pick
flowers or fruit and deliver them to your neighbours.
Rejoice before him in the
human race: (Put OHP up) resolve to have fun with people this holiday. The other night we had a boys' night out,
planned the night before; throw a surprise party for people you know have been
going through the mill recently. Plan a
party which celebrates something of your faith - fancy dress saints, with
Jewish food, followed by a communion (of course, you'd have to invite the vicar).
Basically, be creative with
the time you've got, and decide to enjoy it, knowing God wants you to. This holiday, let's see every day is a gift,
an opportunity which God wants us to live to the full. Jesus Christ comes
challenging us not to make a living but to make a life.
Write down.
Read Lionel Blue piece at
home.
Write down what you can remember!
Work___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rest___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Play___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
(A
free holiday in Bognor Regis for the best answers - see the rector)
Two
holiday questions:
1. What can you do to have real rest this
holiday?
2. What can
you do to celebrate and play this holiday?