Not, I suppose, a blind follower of a random mindless herd. (Unless that’s what all followers of Christ are). I like to believe that I have the capacity to think with some originality. I like to believe that I have some passion to do things that matter. In fact, I even have a passion statement.

But every time I hear conversations about not being sheep, about being original, about being independent and trailblazing and leaving cubicles, I struggle a bit.

Because I ache. Because no matter how hard I try I still find myself walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Because no matter how hard I try, I am in the presence of the enemy of my soul. Because I need, oh, I so desperately need still water. Because my soul needs restoration.

And you do too. Right? I mean there are moments when you cannot help but be a sheep. Not the conformist image we fight, but the somewhat fragile being that everyone  - everyone – wants a piece of.

I guess I’m not talking about jobs, about careers, about status and success. I’m talking about what’s behind all that, the gaping hole in your chest behind the facade of the press release. The dull ache the next morning when the sun comes up and everything you thought would work didn’t.

That’s when it’s worth understanding what it means to be a sheep. And what it means to have a shepherd who is willing to lead and feed and heal and restore. And in the middle of the valley, be present. And in the front of the enemies, serve a feast.

It is David’s favorite lyric:  ”The Lord is my shepherd.”

I’d love to give me that, too.

You are probably better than I am at stopping. Me? When I sit down to be still, it allows me to remember the things that aren’t done. It allows me to think about what I could be doing with this time. It allows me to fill the time with chatter. Or with clutter. Or with activity.

I wonder if part of the problem with the way I try to be still. I try to concentrate. I try to be quiet. I try to stop, so that maybe I can hear God and hear myself.

Here’s what’s interesting, however. When I decide to spend time with Nancy, I don’t talk about the need to be still.  I don’t berate myself for my incapacity for not being with her. I don’t spend time not with her thinking I should be with her.

I go find her.

If I am having a hard time concentrating, I tell her. (And when I do, it usually comes as no surprise to her.) And I may ask her to help me remember something. And I may say, “can we walk and talk?” And I may say, “I’ll be back in 5 minutes.”

So here’s what I’m thinking. I’m thinking that maybe I should stop worrying so much about emptying my head and start working more on listening to and for Jesus. In the words of other people. In the words written for us by John and Matthew and others.

Maybe if I thought more about conversation with Him and less about being silent first, just like Nancy does, He would help with both.

Happy weekend, friends.

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Related post: A question of stopping

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Yesterday I stitched together posts  about John 4, explored  ideas with our Saturday night small group, and preached. I’m grateful for the responses, grateful for what I learned while studying.

I don’t want to talk about the message here. I want to talk about the day after.

The day after I teach or preach is often a pretty numb day. I spend Sunday playing tapes in my head, identifying the “what I should have said” and “what I could have said” and “That was a dumb thing to say.” I know that these are not objective statements. I try to take a nap which has the effect of rebooting my brain.

I say this to let you know that if you teach or preach and this happens to you, you are not alone.

On Monday, I find thinking to be a difficult thing to do. There is often little creativity. There is often little patience. There is often little initiative. There is a tendency to argue with comments about the previous day’s performance, especially if those comments are positive. There is a tendency to think of the previous day as a performance.

I say this to let you know that if you teach or preach and this happens to you, you are not alone.

There is little desire to do what Jesus did in these situations, to go off by himself and spend time with his dad. There is little desire to let responsibility for what people do with the teaching rest with them and with God.

I say this to let you know that if you teach or preach and this happens to you, you are not alone.

I’m glad I’m not alone.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding.” Solomon, the man who many consider to be the wisest man ever, said that in Proverbs 3:5.

Jesus said trust is being like a child. Remember how it felt when you were learning to swim and you would flail about in the pool – and then when your parent swam over and lifted you up, you relaxed?

How can we trust in God when He is hard to see, feel? If we listen, the closer we will get to Him.

“All your heart…” We can’t hold anything back. If we have done something we know is wrong, we need to ask His forgiveness. And if that wrong involves someone else, we need to seek them out too. We can’t come before God with an unresolved conflict. True, there are exceptions to this. If that person is gone, we can’t find resolution with them. But God can heal that wound, if we ask Him to. It may take a long time for that healing to come – or it may come very quickly. In this day of instant results, we all get impatient waiting. (And the wound may not be healed in the way we expect.)

“Don’t depend on your own understanding.” I come back to swimming. Remember fighting the water? When you learned to let the water hold you up, you were able to glide across the pool. Depending on our own power can be like fighting God. We all go through life feeling like we know the answers. But the more we learn to trust, the better we can live and breathe.

Try relaxing in God’s arms, if you haven’t before. If you have, try actively trusting more today than you did yesterday. You’ll sleep better too.

What does Jesus say about vacation?

As far as I know, nothing.

However, in his life he would have lived with a balance that doesn’t show up in mine. He would have taken one day in seven to rest, though not legalistically. He would have stopped working at dusk. He would have kept a schedule of feasting that had both solemnity and celebration. He thought nothing of going away from the crowd to think and pray, even when it got in the way of enhancing his reputation. He apparently relaxed enough with his disciples that we read about them arguing with him, something that friends do. He lived a lot of conversations and actions and meals and naps that weren’t considered important enough to be recorded for everyone to read about later, that were intended to be enjoyed in the moment.

I, on the other hand, stretch the edges. I try to multipurpose expereince, capturing the memories with pictures and blog posts and sermon illustrations. I arrive at vacation time and scramble to get work done ahead of time and to catch up on the work afterwards. I feel a need to cram as many experiences into the time not working as possible, so as to redeem the resting time.

And I am not alone, am I?

I spent the last week with my family and my parents. It was a good time. I tried not to think too much about writing, about reading, about working through a pile of necessary expereinces. And I’m trying to understand what a life lived balanced might look like.

I mean, apart from looking a lot like Jesus.

He talks to 20,000 people about his dad. He talks to his dad about feeding 20,000 people. He talks to his followers about picking up the leftovers after the meal that he and his dad had prepared for the 20,000 people.

It was, by any measure, a wonderful day.

So what does he do to celebrate? Have an after-party? Take a nap? Sit around telling stories with his friends? Let the crowd remind him of how great he is?

Nope.

He sends his closest followers away. He gets rid of the crowd. And he heads up a mountainside by the lake to talk with his dad. All night.

It’s the last thing that most of us would do. We would deserve to do something else. We would be thrilled by the success of the event. But I think for Jesus, there wasn’t an event. This wasn’t a performance, planned with script and moves and actors and tricks. This day was not on the agenda, at least from a human perspective.

Jesus had planned a day of solitude. His relative John had been killed by Herod. He knew that he was on Herod’s list, too. So Jesus headed for the hills to get away.

When he got to the beach at the foot of the hills, he found a crowd of 20,000 people. At the end of himself, from a human perspective, he felt compassion. He preached. He fed. He forgot about how he felt and took care of the people.

Then he took care of himself. He spent the night talking with someone who understood him, who cared about him, who knew the plan, the pressure, the risks, the rewards. He spent time with his dad.

When it goes well, do you get alone…or do you get with God?

Sometimes you have to stop and listen and ask and listen.

Sometimes you need questions. Simple questions. Questions of few syllables and deep thought.

When was the last time you stopped?

That’s an easy question to ask. That’s a very difficult question to be asked. Which is why I am asking us.

After denouncing the cities who ignored what he did, Jesus invites people to come and rest. After pointing out that they had seen miracles and hadn’t repented, Jesus calls out to weary people.

It is, apparently, not life-transforming to watch miracles. When we ask for them, we ought to remember that I suppose. We think that miracles will so amaze that everyone will be compelled to believe.

But it isn’t so.

A miracle watched happens outside us. Repentance happens inside us. With an about face, we find our lives changed, a turning from the way we were going.

We make much, however of the turning, of the repenting. But Jesus isn’t making much of the turn itself, of the moment of turning. Instead, after the condemnation, he speaks of rest, of humility, of burdens being lifted, of gentleness. More than lamenting the lack of repenting, he is encouraging the coming.

Late at night, when being driven by the list, rest seems desirable, but out of reach. In the morning, when being driven by the list, rest seems long gone. In the middle of the day, between the calls and the visits and the ambiguity and the precisely-phrased demands, rest seems impossible.

Which is, of course, why it is being offered by one with tremendous power and authority. How else could it happen? How else could we find it?

So then, you and I, a question: When was the last  time you stopped?

We plan extra services. We make services extra special. We worry about signage and supplies. We get all consumed.

We schedule Good Friday off. And then many of us work. The day that even public schools cancel classes as a religious holiday, those who are on church staff work.

I understand the pressure. I have spent years being very active for Easter services, long before I was on church staff. And I understand the anxiety of not getting right, the fear that it (whatever it is) won’t be perfect enough for all the people who are coming expecting to be amazed. And the fear that if we don’t get it right, all those people who come to church just on Christmas and Easter will be offended or won’t be impressed. And then God will be disappointed.

I was thinking through this while driving home on the Thursday of Easter week. We’ve worked hard. Things are ready. And I was feeling a little hollow, a little empty.

And then I started to think about Easter. The point of Easter, the reason for Jesus dying and rising again, is that we can’t get good enough. We just can’t quite measure up. We always fall short when left to ourselves.

And Jesus says, “come on, little weak one, and I will give you rest.” It’s not going to be through hard work that God is pleased, but through relationship.

And Jesus says, “You can’t get to the Father except through me.”  It’s not going to be how perfectly we fit the service together, but whether we make the introductions, “Jesus, I’d like you to meet my good friend Dave. Dave, this is Jesus.”

Nothing wrong with hard work. Unless we’re addicted.

Okay, so I don’t know exactly how he did it. But I do know that he provided exactly the right amount for one day’s food on each of five days. On the sixth day he provided exactly enough for two days. As a result, on the seventh day he didn’t provide any and no one had to collect any.

I thought about the manna in relation to this blog.

I’m exploring following Jesus three-hundred words a day. I started out to write every day. I realized that writing every day doesn’t permit a sabbath, a day of rest, for you or for me.

I realized I could schedule posts ahead of time, but that still puts things into your email or feed reader every day, putting a burden on you and on me to keep up, to answer comments.

I realized that I need to schedule a day to not have to think for this blog.

So my plan is to put up a post on Saturday. This will be for the weekend. That way you can read Saturday or Sunday. And I won’t have to write on Saturday night or for Saturday night.  I think it will bring some freedom.

And I leave you and I with words of Mark Buchanan from The Rest of God:

There is a terrible cost to our busyness. It erodes memory. Or worse than that, it turns good memory into mere nostalgia–memory falsified and petrified–and turns bad memory into bloodhounds that chase us to rend us, that keep us ever running, dodging, backtracking. Busyness destroys the time we need to remember well.

In the confusion, we forget who we are. The broken pieces remain strewn.