My wife Mary Lynn has been part of a group of pastor's wives meeting and talking through the book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero. She pointed out to me these opening paragraphs to the sixth chapter as a good picture of the need we are addressing in our current sermon series at Celebration-Harderwyk on Spiritual Practices. I pass them along with recommendation of the book as well.
We live in a blizzard. And few of us have a rope.
In his book a Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer relates a story about farmers in the Midwest who would prepare for blizzards by tying a rope from the back door of their house out to the barn as a guide to ensure they would return safely home. These blizzards came quickly and fiercely and were highly dangerous. When their full force was blowing, a farmer could not see the end of his or her hand. Many froze to death in those blizzards, disoriented by their inability to see. They wandered in circles, lost sometimes in their own backyards. If they lost their grip on the rope, it became impossible for them to find their way back home. Some froze within feet of their own front door, never realizing how close they were to safety.
To this day, in parts of Canada and the Great Plains, meteorologists counsel people that, to avoid getting lost in the blinding snow when they venture outside, they tie one end of a long rope to their house and grasp the other end firmly.
Many of us have lost our way, spiritually, in the white out of the Blizzard swirling around us. Blizzards begin when we say yes to too many things. Between demands from work and family, our lives fall somewhere between full and overflowing. We multitask, so much so that we are unaware we are doing three things at once. We admire people who are able to accomplish so much in so little time. They are our role models.
At the same time many of us are overscheduled, tense, addicted to hurry, frantic, preoccupied, fatigued, and starved for time. Cramming as much as possible into our to do lists, we battle life to make the best use of every spare minute we have.
Yet not much changes. Our productivity becomes counterproductive. We end our days exhausted from work and raising children. And then our “free time” on weekends becomes filled with more demands in an already overburdened life.
We listen to sermons and read books about slowing down and creating margin in our lives. We read about the need to rest and recharge our batteries. Our workplaces offer seminars on increased productivity through replenishing ourselves.
But we can't stop. And if we aren't busy, we feel guilty that we waste time and are not productive.
We go through the motions of doing so many things as if there is no alternative way of spending our days. It is like being addicted - only it is not to drugs or alcohol but to tasks, to work, to doing. Any sense of rhythm in our daily, weekly, and yearly lives has been swallowed up in the blizzard of our lives.
Add to this the storms and trials of life that blow into our lives unexpectedly and catch us off guard, and we wonder why so many of us are disoriented and confused.
We need a rope to lead us home.
God is offering us a rope to keep us from getting lost. This rope consistently leads us back home to him, to a place that is centered and rooted. This rope can be found in two ancient disciplines going back thousands of years - the Daily Office and Sabbath. When placed inside present-day Christianity, the Daily Office and Sabbath are groundbreaking, countercultural acts against western culture. They are powerful declarations about God, ourselves, our relationships, our beliefs, and our values.
Stopping for the Daily Office and Sabbath is not meant to add another to-do to our already busy schedules. It is the resetting of our entire lives toward a new destination- God. It is an entirely new way of being in the world.
The Daily Office and Sabbath are ropes that lead us back to God in the blizzards of life. They are anchors for living in the hurricane of demands. When done as a “want to” rather than a “have to,” they offer us a rhythm for our lives that binds us to the living God.
They are nothing short of revolutionary disciplines for Christians today.
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero - Chapter 6 – pp. 139-141
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