echoes of redemption

Sometimes when we feel the most stuck, God is doing the most work in our lives.

The book of Hosea is an unbelievably deep metaphor for how God responds to his people and moves with them, redeeming them and growing them to be like him. So when it’s time for Gomer – the character that represents God’s people – to be brought back to God, we watch how he works.

It’s not a long monologue answering every question she has.

It’s not the answer to every pray she’s prayed.

It’s not every door opening up in her life so she could move forward without struggle.

God’s plan was completely backwards.

I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.

- Hosea 2:14-15

So to move deeply in Gomer’s life, God takes her to the wilderness – where most people assume God does nothing. The one place that stands as a universal symbol in Scripture for being apart from God. Being lost. Hopeless.

God’s plan was to take her somewhere she would have nothing but him.

God’s plan was to give her places full of life and hope.

God’s plan was to turn her place of pain into an opportunity of hope.

So maybe the times we think we’re stuck in our faith, God is really doing the most. Moving the most. The closest to us.

Maybe the times we want to give up because we feel stuck are really opportunities to rely on something outside of ourselves and learn that through him we can live a life beyond what we ever imagined.

Maybe the only thing stuck in our lives is our insistence that we can do it on our own.

Rest is hard for us. Unlike most things we face in life, rest is both intangible and unable to be saved. We can’t measure it in time (although it does take time), or accrue enough to carry us through a few busy weeks.

Rest is a lifestyle.

People that rest from work don’t experience the full spectrum of rest. True rest is a rhythm to life that both replenishes us from the past and recharges us for the future. It offers us the opportunity to work from a point of rest.

I don’t know where you are on your journey, but my guess is you’re not getting enough rest.

You may not have a clue how to start though. There is simply too much going on. Just the words “day off” make you snort a little bit. But like most lifestyle changes, it’s easiest to start with little steps.

Take 3 minutes at night to reflect on your day. What went wrong? What went right? How can you live as a better person tomorrow?

Shut off the music in your car and let your mind sit in neutral while you drive. Observe where it goes (don’t judge it). And watch as you begin to piece things together and figure out the next steps.

Plan a 2-3 day period of rest. Set the date a few weeks (or a month…) out and plan to take time off, stay home and do nothing. Just replenish. Journal. Think. Pray.

Whatever the next step is to develop a lifestyle of rest, take it. The only thing you can do to mess up rest is not doing it at all.

More often than not, if we don’t feel rested it’s because the rhythms of our life don’t allow us to live in rest. The pace at which life runs has pushed out the space we need to keep running.

There is no room just to be.

Without space in the rhythms of life, there is no room to be creative, dream or even to figure out how to bring dreams into life. To live like we were designed to live, we have to have space.

We know to avoid over-filling our calendar, but we don’t see crowding our calendar as a problem. Crowded calendars kill creativity.

It’s easy to give communication methods like email control over our schedule and attention rather than allowing messages to sit, wait, or even go unanswered.

Getting ahead has become the new catching up, so we’re always working toward something and we feel behind before we even begin.

We don’t begin disconnecting early enough in the evening. Light from TVs, laptops and phones stimulate the brain and keeps us awake long after we shut the devices off. (Dimming lights in our homes during the eventing prepares our body to go to rest – we actually took the bulb out of our ceiling fan and just use bedside lamps).

Take control of the rhythms of your life. Create space within them. Give yourself room to become all that God created you to be.