My spring grad
courses ended a few weeks ago and the fall courses are a few months away. As I
approached the completion of my spring classes, I felt like singing “free,
free, free at last”.
For a few months
I do not need to spend most of every day sitting at a desk, studying, reading
and uploading posts, and writing papers for class. But what came to mind as I
considered a different rhythm for the summer? Many important and wonderful things:
organizing and cleaning, fun projects, outdoor projects, and sweet time with
old and new friends. I could not wait!
And yet…I knew
God wasn’t directing me simply to exchange the high intensity of schoolwork
with another type of high intensity activity. Instead, he was inviting me to intentionally
choose a different rhythm for this season.
I believe he’s
inviting me to refresh my soul.
Yet this is not easy to do, because it is so hard to slow down in our world!
Noise and rushing are common themes, regardless of our job, our responsibilities,
our activities or family scenarios. Whenever we are offered time to slow down,
we struggle to actually do it. We are saturated with the culture of speed and
busyness, and therefore must choose whether we will allow ourselves more space
in our schedules or not.
How do we make that choice? By remembering.
In a work entitled “Song of Myself”, Walt Whitman paints an inviting
picture of what it looks like to choose rest. He reminds us of the time:
…when summer was a barefoot season of
ease – quite before we grew old enough to mentally convert our time into “dollars
earned” or “places seen”.
Now we're caught in the adult world. It
has new goals. Results – preferably visible – are what counts. Along the way, we’ve
forgotten so many things.
We've forgotten that God delights in us
and we can delight in Him. Our quiet time is filled with the urgency of hurried
prayers or intense reading. We always have words in our mind. There is no
silence. There is no time.
We've even forgotten the small things...like
how to watch a butterfly. How to roll down a hill faster and faster and faster.
Instead, we've learned to produce. In fact, we've learned it so well we all
agree it is necessary…even if we agree reluctantly.
What we haven't learned is how to sometimes be childlike in this adult world. We haven't learned when to forget results and goals and just marvel at being.
In these sunny
months of fresh berries and sunshine here in Oregon, I want to marvel more at
the joy God has in me…and with me. I want to be refreshed and renewed, so that
I might see God presence more clearly, and experience his love in new ways.
My prayer is
that you will, too.
- Julie
