In our culture, we tend to look at the beginning of the year as a time to go charging off to accomplish all the things we said we’d do last year and didn’t, or to begin a host of new habits that we resolved to start, or to stop the old ones we promised ourselves we quit. The temptation is to hit the ground running.
But what if we just took a minute and paused…
I don’t know how it works for you, but I know that when I come home from work after a long day, and I walk through the door and the kids are bouncing off the walls and the dogs are barking, and the television is blaring, and the kitchen is bustling with activity, I just want to take a minute and decompress. Something about quiet at the end of a period, or a season, of high anxiety and stress, helps us to reorder our lives. The holiday season can get us so wrapped around the axle with urgent concerns – money, family, crowds, noise, decorations, cooking, cleaning – that our stress can go right through the roof. It’s hard to hear yourself think, let alone hear from God, when there’s so much going on.
If we’ll slow down… just for a moment… and listen… we might hear our Heavenly Father say, “You are concerned about many urgent things. But in all your activity, be careful not to overlook the truly important things”.
Maybe it’s time to hit pause, and just get quiet for a minute. Pause. Two weeks, starting January 2nd.
On the subject of pausing, I once was asked to participate in an exercise in a small group. We were all asked to close our eyes, bow our heads, and do nothing but pray for a solid 5 minutes. At the end of the 5 minutes we were asked if we were able to pray continuously for the 5 minutes without any distractions. Surprisingly, many people were honest and said that they found themselves thinking of what to cook for company, what needed to be done at work, making mental lists of things to do....they were unable to "Pause" to pray for the entire 5 minutes.
ReplyDeletePerfect timing. This is going to be a good one!
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