Time keeps going at a steady, unrelenting pace. And that pace is heightened because we fill it with activities, with duties, work that must be done, people to be seen, and with the structures of hours, days, weeks and months.
Seasons come and go. The beautiful autumn colors fade and fall into to dark winter cold, and spring blusters give way to summer. The river rises and falls with rainy seasons and dry. Birds fly south and then come north again. Time moves constantly.
The structures and rhythms give us a sense of movement for sure, but they also can control us. We lose track and feel under pressure. We cannot get everything done. We fall behind and feel guilty because we aren’t keeping up. Stress presses into our minds and doesn’t back away. We go from over-stressed to overwhelmed and back again.
Occasionally something happens and we step out of the unrelenting schedule. A disaster strikes, or we are bed-ridden with illness, or someone close to us dies, and suddenly we are in a different sphere. Normal life is on hold. Time stops or melts away. Well, not really – leaves still fall, the sun rises and sets, bulbs bloom and then fade – but we lose track. Our focus is on the present and what it was that led us to set time aside. And then at some point, we recover and rejoin the spinning world.
Or we may choose to step out of the rush for a while, to step away and be with God for a day, a weekend, or longer. Alone, just presenting ourselves, in the present, to God. We surrender, we listen, stand open and vulnerable before our Maker, our Redeemer, the one who loves us more than we will ever know or understand.
We pray, yes, but not working kinds of prayer, but prayers of surrender
of our loved ones,
of our enemies,
of our concerns for others and for the world.
These times of oasis bring great refreshing, as Jesus said, “Come unto me all you who labor and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” There is not much in the world that offers us true rest for our souls; Jesus stands outside the stress and pressure, and says, “come to me…”
In addition, these times are life-changing as God meets us in our love for family and friends, and also in our conflicts with others and the issues we wrestle with inside ourselves.
Maybe most importantly, these times break the driving, relentless march of time. We connect with our Eternal God and realize that he is never driven, never stressed, never falling behind with the work he is doing. When we can see that “our times are in his hands” (Ps 31:15), we can sense the Holy Spirit’s breeze flowing through our hearts and minds, lifting the pressure off our days.
We can then turn our attention to today, to the person in front of us, the next thing. And we can recover the joy that was lost in the scramble.
Molly Deatherage 