An Invitation to Rest
Today our team is on a two week extended break. No email or meetings. No social media. Goodbye Zoom (no hate for Microsoft Teams or Google Meet). No conversations about how we can help move this mission and ministry forward. We are going to lay down the efforts of this year, rest in God’s goodness, and allow him to fill our souls. You might be asking, how are we going to do that? Great question!
◦ Slow Down
Most of us experience a little bit of the “Christmas Crazy” rather than the hopeful waiting of Advent. Somewhere this frantic pace to be at all of the events and do all of the things became normalized. We want to invite you to join us; to do our best to fight against the crazy pace of the holiday season by intentionally slowing down for the last two weeks of December. Our aim is to experience what is on the other side of the question “what matters the most?”. We are creating extra margin for our souls and hearts to be renewed. Join us.
◦ Invite Jesus In
It sounds a bit cliché, but there’s a reason that the lyric “let every heart prepare Him room” exists. We’re really good at filling our minds and hearts with everything but Jesus. As we end another year; one thing that’s evident is that we as a society have returned to the frantic pace of the world. There is no better time than now to actively invite Jesus into all areas of our life! Join us and invite Jesus into your thoughts and hearts so that he can shape you and lead you in the coming year ahead.
◦ Spend Quality Time with Family
As we slow down, we are going to set aside anything that overwhelms us for the little things that delight our hearts. With that extra margin, we are going to spend more time with our families and be intentional about sharing in the hopeful anticipation with our kids this Christmas season. We’ll take long drives to look at Christmas lights, spend time in our PJ’s watching our favorite Christmas movies and drink lots of hot chocolate with marshmallows. Unless we fight for it we will likely not experience it. Join us and create space for those closest to you; we’ll show our families how much we love them by modeling a rhythm of rest.
If you’re looking for words, maybe to pray to ask God to guide you in this season we’ve included some below.
“O God, gather me now
to be with you
as you are with me.
Soothe my tiredness;
quiet my fretfulness;
curb my aimlessness;
relieve my compulsiveness;
let me be easy for a moment.
O Lord, release me
from the fears and guilts
which grip me so tightly;
from the expectations and opinions
which I so tightly grip,
that I may be open
to receiving what you give,
to risking something genuinely new,
to learning something refreshingly different.”
To Be Continued…
