August 6th, 2008 Jeff
Every once in a while I leave my wallet at home (like I did in January for an overnight flight and trip). Have my ID but no cash or cards and venture out unwittingly into daily life. Done that two days straight. I am out of rhythm!
Today is the middle day of three weeks in a Greek intensive course. Good times. Challenging material, and time consuming. Feel like giving up many times a day, as all things worth doing take hard work.
My only quasi-complaint is that the dusk to past dawn schedule of life these three weeks makes being healthy a difficult chore. (Okay, I’m not complaining, just observing!). No cycling into town (which is good for my back especially), so no exercise other than walking, and little sleep as I’ve been up past midnight parsing and translating and memorizing.
Again, I am, in a phrase: out of rhythm . Could not keep up this pace for more than a little sprint like this. The mental and emotional drain — especially wanting to be my best self for Kari and for Dutch in the evenings, pushing Greek to after they head to bed — is multiplied by physical pain. My back pain flairs up, and posture doesn’t help when sitting almost the entire day. Feels like a knife in the lower back. Being out of rhythm is painful.
We were meant to be in step with the Spirit, to have different tempos for different seasons, and to both labor hard and to rest well. Looking forward to getting back in a more manageable rhythm later this month, since life is a marathon and not a sprint like this.
(Some call it a daily routine or even balance , but I call it rhythm , as we were created to walk in step with our Creator on His chosen path. Routine sounds boring and mundane, and balance reminds of weighing good and bad. ‘Rhythm’ brings a sacredness to the mundane activities of life, those things we have to do and joyfully participate with Christ and in cultivating them into worship experiences.)
And I pray I would continue to be actively fighting against temptation all the while. May Christ be with us, under us, before us, upholding and carrying us all the way.
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June 21st, 2008 Jeff
Sometimes we say our words must be a balance of love and truth . Think about that phrase.
A balance? As if truth and love are to be weighed in comparison? Shall we have 50% love and 50% truth, or if we are really bold, then 80% truth but keep the loving flowing a little at 20%. The concept comes from Ephesians 4:15 : "speaking the truth in love." Our truth must be filtered in love, and our love must be filtered in truth. There is a happy tension in there for sure. People deserve 100% of both, for love and truth are not enemies but rather best of friends. God is Truth; He is Love; He is neither one in part, but both in His fullness. Jesus’s incarnation reveals this much for in Him dwells all the fullness of grace (love) and truth (John 1:14 ).
"Balance" is a metaphor, and I contend, it is an incomplete one. We use it to talk about balancing work and play, our finances, our relationships, our emotional and chemical state, and just about everything else it seems here in the West. Do you have a balanced diet? The picture of "balance" is, at the very least, incomplete, in my humble opinion. For is God (and are we?) solely interested in finding out how to balance our careers and our families? Isn’t there more to this vapor of a life than simply finding our inner balance?
Enter a better, more descriptive word: Rhythm .
Rhythm (from Greek rhythmos , "any measured flow or movement, symmetry") is the variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or other events.
The Christian life is a journey towards realizing God’s rhythm. (I would say ‘finding’ it, but must confess I don’t think we are capable of looking for or finding it ourselves.) All things in the end will be brought into full harmony through Christ ( Eph. 1:10 ), while in the interim we endure this broken, unrhythmic world. Through Christ’s redemption from our fallen state, the Spirit’s renewing us and empowering His community of believers, and the Father’s joy in making us full sons of God, we get to join in the dance (perichoresis ) with the Triune God.
It seems that the New Testament vision of Christ is less about bringing balance to our lives, and more about restoring the underlying rhythm of the entire universe, us included as the most important aspect of creation ( Romans 8:18-27 ). Perhaps the reason why so much of our "preaching" these days (How To …) does not transform is because it is aimed at this make-believe balance rather than transforming the whole person to live in the whole rhythm of our Creator.
I don’t know much about music and cannot carry a tune, but when I hear good music, it makes the soul groove. The harmony and melody and beats come together in a true concert of sounds, which makes one think ‘ah, that’s how it is supposed to be!’
- How about you? What makes (musical) rhythm attractive to you?
- And how do we go about achieving God’s harmony for our lives?
Kari and I are committed to finding out what it means to live in the Gospel rhythms, or to use the NT wording, walk in step with the Spirit, in His rhythm. We find our balance living in His rhythm.
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