For me I find these necessary moments where I disconnect from life’s busyness and the engaging in the war so to speak. What war do I speak of and why call it a war? The war is the engaging with humanity’s pain and pointing souls to hope… God’s hope/His love. Self care and self-rest or sabbath is so important for one’s own life, recovery, and walk with God. For me personally, I find this reconnection with God and recharging through heading out into the mountains each weekend. Being atop a ridge line, an alpine trail, or staring at where coastal waters meet mountains all reconnect me to my walk with God and reset me for another week of work and ministry.
A CALLING OF RYTHYM
But it’s more than just a job or ministry… it’s a calling, one that involves really all of us to some degree. This calling is one of living on this earth like Jesus taught… to love Him and love our fellow man in all the pain and suffering. Jesus did this among the religious crowd sure, but so many of them rejected Him. Most of His ministry, healing, and teaching took place among society’s fringe that most others overlooked. If He walked this world today, I’d imagine Him doing this among souls still wandering through addiction, homelessness, relational dysfunction, trafficking, foster care, diseases of all kinds and “fill in the blank” other areas of suffering.
So it’s time for us to wake up. God keeps showing me this more and more as I’m intentional. This intentional living comes in three ways,
- We must be intentional in our own walk with God each day.
- We must be intentional in regular engaging a hurting world.
- We must be intentional to regularly disconnect and recharge.
Now the first two are critically important, otherwise we don’t keep growing ourselves or helping others. However, apart from the third one, the first two will eventually burn out. In fact the more intentional I am doing things consistently that reconnect me with God, my family, and overall refresh me, the more keenly I see the needs around me. I truly believe this is because that third rhythm flows out of the first two rhythms.
WAKING UP TO INTENTIONALITY
It’s time to wake up to the needs not just around us, but to the ability to see those needs more clearly. If we allow the pleasures of this world to take over our focus, then we miss the deep needs all around us and even forgot the God behind all that’s beautiful in this world. If we allow the needs all around us to overwhelm us, then we run out of energy to affect any of it. If we become all book knowledge and all intellectual religion, then we become empty and judgmental toward a world in desperate need.
Thus we need to wake up to the critical place all three of these rhythms carry in our everyday lives. As you grow in those three areas of intentional living, then you’re ready to really see the needs with more clarity. I love the example Jesus left us… from children to adults He was intentional in all these ways and as He interacted with the world, His example challenged the religious status quo.
I’ll leave you with a simple but powerful quote by my friend Britney Baier,
“We are called to love one another no matter what. In a world full of hate, be love.”
with love,
- Derek Black
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