Monthly Musings: January

It’s a little late to be wishing you a Happy New Year, and yet this is my first post for 2016 so I’ll say it anyway. Happy New Year. I hope it’s been a good start for you, and that you’ve had opportunity to rest and relax over the summer break. I confess it feels a little odd to be reflecting when the year has only just begun and it seems that things are only just beginning to unfold and yet to fully emerge. Still, here are a few things to share from January. I hope to be posting more regularly over the coming months.

• Christmas holidays were a wonderful time to catch up on sleep and a pile of books, but I also needed to get outside. I took a walk in one of my favourite places, the Mount Lofty Gardens, and reminded myself of the wonders of spending time in out in nature.

• Thanks to a couple of handy YouTube tutorials I learnt how to crochet hearts, and spent an evening making a small pile of them. Once I got the hang of it they were quite simple and enjoyable to make.

• I came across a wonderful quote on prayer from Richard Foster in his book Prayer: finding the heart’s true home. This is something I want to sit with and ponder for a while until it really sinks into my heart and not just my head.

Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth but from falling in love.

• One of my favourite genres of fiction is historical mystery, and this month I finally read the first book in C. J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake series. Dissolution is set in the context of the dissolution of Catholic monasteries in England during the reign of King Henry VIII. The history was every bit as fascinating (and frightening) as the mystery.

 

Monthly Musings: December

December is a month that feels different from any of the others. It is a month for completion and a month for preparation. A month for celebration. As work and school is finishing for the year for many, there are also preparations for Christmas celebrations and summer holidays.

A month for rest and relaxation. A month where we rush at the start to slow down at the end. There’s a reason why it’s called the Christmas rush, but once Christmas Day is over, there’s permission to rest and relax, to enjoy the summer.

A month for reflection and anticipation. To reflect on what the year has taught us, and to anticipate what the new year will bring.

This year the most popular blog post on Flourish! was actually one from a previous year. With every ending comes a new beginning seems appropriate for New Years Eve, so I want to share it with you again:

Whatever endings you are facing today, whether you’re feeling happy or sad, exhilarated or terrified, relieved or just plain tired, may new beginnings be fresh air for you.

May your every breath be blessed.

Now, and in the year to come.

Monthly Musings: October reflections

It’s time again for monthly musings, and this time I just wanted to reflect for a few minutes on writing through the month of October. This isn’t new, other writers have been here before. But this my path, and these are the things I’ve discovered for myself.

1. Letting go of perfectionism. When you have to post every day, there isn’t enough time to write and rewrite to get it perfect. At some point you have to decide it’s good enough and press Publish.
2. Writing to deadline. Lots and lots of short deadlines means you have to keep showing up and putting pen to paper and fingers to the keyboard. Even when you don’t have any great ideas and aren’t feeling inspired.
3. Writing on the same topic every day. Writing and posting on the same topic every day for a month makes it easier and harder. Easier because you have a frame to work within. Harder because you have to keep finding new elements, new perspectives to keep the topic interesting.
4. I still don’t have a solution for procrastination. Deadlines help, but they can also mean that you just get less sleep so you can hit Publish before midnight. Ironic when you’re writing about rest – but then I knew that was a risk from the beginning.
5. Uncovering insights. Sometimes I don’t realise what ideas or insights I have on a topic until I’ve started writing. I might think I have nothing to say, until I start to say it. Sometimes it just unfolds in the process of writing. That’s a weird feeling, but also good.
6. But wait, there’s more. Even though the series has ended I know that there’s a lot more about rest to be discovered and practised. This is really just the beginning of finding the rhythm of rest, and I fully expect to be writing about it more in the future. As they say, watch this space.

What did you discover in October?

Image credit: morguefile.com

31 Days: Practising the Rhythm of Rest

  

As we come to the end of this series on the Rhythm of Rest, I hope that you’ve enjoyed it and have found something helpful for your own situation. It’s been a pleasure and privilege to explore this theme with you, and wonderful to hear from some of you about how it has blessed you. I would also like to point you towards some other resources that you may find helpful as you continue to explore and establish the rhythm of rest.

This is a list of books I have either read or plan to read, that explore rest in some way:

• An Unhurried Life: following Jesus’ rhythms of work and rest by Alan Fadling
• Crazy Busy: a (mercifully) short book about a (really) big problem by Kevin DeYoung
• Finding Spiritual Whitespace: awakening your soul to rest by Bonnie Gray
• The Grace Outpouring: becoming a people of blessing by Roy Godwin and Dave Roberts
• Invitation to Solitude and Silence by Ruth Haley Barton
• Sabbath by Dan B. Allender
• Sacred Pathways: discover your soul’s path to God by Gary L. Thomas
• Sacred Rhythms: arranging our lives for spiritual transformation by Ruth Haley Barton
• Sacred Waiting: waiting on God in a world that waits for nothing by David Timms
• Soul Keeping: caring for the most important part of you by John Ortberg
• Soul Space: where God breaks in by Jerome Daley
• Walk in a Relaxed Manner: life lessons from the Camino by Joyce Rupp

If you know of any other books worth reading please let me know in the Comments.

  

The following music has been meaningful to me and I share this list in the hope that you may also find it helpful:

• “Come to me” by Bethel Music & Jenn Johnson (on the album The Loft Sessions)
• “Dwell” by Aaron Keyes (on the album Dwell)
• “Receive” by Brian Morykon (on the album The Smallest Seed)
• “Rest in me” by Ann-Maree Keefe (on the album Cryptology)
• “Restless” by Audrey Assad (on the album The House You’re Building)
• “You speak” by Audrey Assad (on the album Fortunate Fall)
• “Worn” by Tenth Avenue North (on the album The Struggle)

(These songs are also available individually on iTunes.)

I’m also appreciating the music of Alberto & Kimberly Rivera (I’ve been listening to their albums Yearnings and Live Soaking Sessions, Vol 1 but there are plenty of others to explore).

Finally, let me bless you in the name of Jesus, to experience glorious refreshing rest and joy in his presence. May you learn the life-sustaining rhythms of work and rest as you walk with the Lord. And may you flourish in the fullness of his love for you.

This is Day 31 of The Rhythm of Rest series (Write 31 Days challenge).

Image credits: morguefile.com

31 Days: Make every effort to enter God’s rest

 

We’re really just beginning to experience God’s rest, but there is so much more that awaits us when we respond in faith. This is God’s promise to us if we don’t give up – perfect rest with him. Rest from trouble, conflict, pain, sorrow and death. No more hunger, no more thirst, no more tears. Instead joy, refreshment and satisfaction in his presence. Isn’t that something immeasurably precious? That’s our homecoming, our eternal inheritance.

These words keep ringing in our ears:

Today, please listen; don’t turn a deaf ear as in the bitter uprising. 

For who were the people who turned a deaf ear? Weren’t they the very ones Moses led out of Egypt? And who was God provoked with for forty years? Wasn’t it those who turned a deaf ear and ended up corpses in the wilderness? And when he swore that they’d never get where they were going, wasn’t he talking to the ones who turned a deaf ear? They never got there because they never listened, never believed. 

For as long, then, as that promise of resting in him pulls us on to God’s goal for us, we need to be careful that we’re not disqualified. We received the same promises as those people in the wilderness, but the promises didn’t do them a bit of good because they didn’t receive the promises with faith. If we believe, though, we’ll experience that state of resting. But not if we don’t have faith. Remember that God said, 

Exasperated, I vowed, “They’ll never get where they’re going, never be able to sit down and rest.” 

God made that vow, even though he’d finished his part before the foundation of the world. Somewhere it’s written, “God rested the seventh day, having completed his work,” but in this other text he says, “They’ll never be able to sit down and rest.” So this promise has not yet been fulfilled. Those earlier ones never did get to the place of rest because they were disobedient. God keeps renewing the promise and setting the date as today, just as he did in David’s psalm, centuries later than the original invitation: 

Today, please listen, don’t turn a deaf ear . . .

And so this is still a live promise. It wasn’t canceled at the time of Joshua; otherwise, God wouldn’t keep renewing the appointment for “today.” The promise of “arrival” and “rest” is still there for God’s people. God himself is at rest. And at the end of the journey we’ll surely rest with God. So let’s keep at it and eventually arrive at the place of rest, not drop out through some sort of disobedience.

Hebrews 3:14-4:11 (The Message)

This is Day 30 of The Rhythm of Rest (Write 31 Days challenge).

Image credit: morguefile.com