Alan Fadling's Blog, page 20

Resting in Busy Seasons

Blog by Alan Fadling

I have been working with my practice of Sabbath for some time now. I still don’t feel like an expert, but I am certainly a grateful student. Recently, I read a line in Exodus that felt especially timely: 

 

Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.

Exodus 34:21

 

What struck me in this passage is that Sabbath is a practice for us even when we are in busier seasons of our work. For God’s people in the days of the Exodus, it would have been understandably tempting to work daily in the intense seasons of planting and of harvest. But God knew this was especially when his people needed rest for their souls. 

 

God encourages us (commands us, really) to observe the Sabbath even when it’s hard to do, even when we’re in a busy season. Maybe God wants us to realize that we especially need the Sabbath in such seasons. Putting Sabbath off might do harm to our souls and our communities. 

 

In seasons of intense productivity or profit, we may need even more the rest that reminds us that we are not what we do, but instead are beloved sons and daughters of our Father in heaven. In moments when we are most tempted to believe that we are indispensable or that our work is unavoidable, we need the reminder that the world will go on without us. 

 

That’s not bad news but good. It is a great burden to believe that the universe is desperately in need of my activities and initiatives. A year ago, in the midst of Gem preparing to launch her new book, Hold That Thought, and her refreshed membership for women, Replenish, we stepped completely away for our annual sabbatical month (July). 

 

It was hard to do. It was hard to put these intensive parts of her work on pause. But it was necessary. We are not what we harvest. We are not what we produce. We are not what we achieve. We are God’s beloved daughters and sons who do good work and produce good fruit. 

 

When we find ourselves in very busy seasons, the practice of Sabbath reminds us of these things. When our lives and work are most intense, this is when we most need the gift of Sabbath. It requires a great deal of faith to do it, but it is faith well-placed. 

 

I can’t think of a busy season when I observed a Sabbath or taken a retreat and afterwards wished I hadn’t. Never. Instead, I’ve often been surprised at the grace that arose when I returned to my work. It has always been good when I’ve honored the rhythm of Sabbath in my busiest seasons of work. 

 

In all of this, I invite you to start exactly where you are today. Continue good habits of Sabbath rest even if, and especially when, things are busier for you. Experiment with saying “No” when everything in you feels pressured to say “Yes.” 

 

Experiment with deepening your commitment to daily moments of rest, weekly experiences of Sabbath, monthly times to step aside to be alone with God in retreat, perhaps even annual blocks of time to reflect on the year before and listen to God for the year ahead. These will serve you well, especially when your work is at its fullest. 

 

I believe this commitment will bear more fruit than constant work can. 

 

For Reflection: 

When have you found yourself in a more intense season? How were you able (or how did you struggle) to make space for good rest in those seasons? 
How might God be inviting you to practice good rhythms of rest, especially if it feels hard to do in your current season? 

 

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

ICDT #89: Engaging World Events Without Being Overwhelmed (Carmen LaBerge)

 

Almost everyone I speak with these days is tired or stressed in troubling ways. Not only do we carry our regular burdens and concerns, but we also carry around our knowledge of what is going on in our country and around the globe.

 

While it is true that we cannot psychologically bear up under the weight of all that we see and hear in the information age—we do want to have a basic knowledge of world events.

 

But how do we hold all of this without becoming overwhelmed? How can we be a healthy member of our planet without crumbling beneath the weight?

 

My guest today is radio host, Carmen LaBerge, and she is going to help us make our way.

 

Carmen LaBerge is an author, speaker and host of the Christian talk radio show Mornings with Carmen LaBerge, across the Faith Radio Network. On air, live each weekday morning, Carmen demonstrates civil conversation as she and her guests bring the mind of Christ to bear on the headline news of the day. 

 

Carmen has conducted thousands of interviews with widely respected influencers, reporters, authors, and leaders. She is author of Speak the Truth: Bring God back into every Conversation and blogs at www.carmenlaberge.com

A Vibrant Connection

Blog by Gem Fadling

A few years ago I read Thomas Kelly’s A Testament of Devotion. He described in eloquent prose a dynamic that I had experienced, but had not yet found words for.

 

There is a way of ordering our mental life on more than one level at once. On one level we may be thinking, discussing, seeing, calculating, meeting all the demands of external affairs. But deep within, behind the scenes, at a profounder level, we may also be in prayer and adoration, song and worship and a gentle receptiveness to divine breathings. . . . In a deeply religious culture people know that the deep level of prayer and of divine attendance is the most important thing in the world. It is at this deep level that the real business of life is determined. . . . Between the two levels is fruitful interplay, but ever the accent must be upon the deeper level, where the soul ever dwells in the presence of the Holy One.

Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1941), 9. 

 

You are likely familiar with this living-on-two-levels dynamic as well. You are aware of your surroundings, responsibilities, relationships, and tasks…AND…aware of the movements of the Spirit within you.

 

Even if we are aware of the Spirit within, it takes gracious effort to maintain a connection to that reality of our inner life in an way that informs our relationships and work.

 

Let's return to the idea that we are always and ever in God's presence. “In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)

 

Within this we have our own life, a gift given by God to us. And throughout this life we move through various seasons: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, family, work, midlife, and second-half of life. There are various seasons that we move into, out of, and through over the course of our entire life.

 

And at the same time all of this is going on, we are praying and worshipping, learning about and connecting with God. We grow better at discerning the work of the Spirit within us. 

 

The key is to continue to grow more and more deeply aware of the connections between what God is doing within us and what is happening around us.

 

You can learn to craft fresh narratives as you make sense of your life with and in God. There is no actual separation. You are one human with one life: inner and outer.

 

Our inner life with God informs our outer life. And our outer life expresses our inner life. Do you see the vibrant cycle and exchange that is happening here?

 

There is an inflow and then an outflow. And ultimately an overflow. We receive from God, God nurtures us from the inside out, and this is how we make our way through the world. We then share with others who we are, what we know, and what we've received.

 

Within all of this organic process, a life of discernment emerges. Without this awareness about which Kelly speaks, we often look back with regret and forward with worry. However, with this paradigm intact we can look back with discernment and forward with hope. This is a much more welcome process.

 

Might God be inviting us to become more aware of the divine breathings of the Spirit and how this shapes our interactions and involvements? What might this look like in your life? 

 

Spiritual leadership, at its best, comes from an authentic place within. Our relationship with God and who we are becoming is central to our influence.

 

Reflection

How aware are you of this vibrant connection between the levels of your life?
What does a connection with divine breathings mean to you?
How might you overflow from that place into your relationships and work?

 

Photo by zero take on Unsplash

ICDT #88: Lectio Divina

 

Many of you have likely heard of a way of engaging scripture called Lectio Divina. It is a kind of “Divine Reading.” What I love about Lectio Divina is that it is a slow and formational way of engaging the bible. It can help us move from our heads to our hearts. Lectio Divina is reflective, meditative, receptive and responsive. 

 

Let’s begin with a little Lectio 101, and then I will guide you in the practice as we experience Psalm 73:23-26 together.

The four movements of Lectio Divina are: 

Read (Lectio) 
Reflect (Meditatio) 
Respond (Oratio) 
Rest (Contemplatio) 

With Lectio Divina, rather than gathering information, we seek to allow God to meet us in our hearts and minds in a spirit of transformation. We allow ourselves to sink into the passage…to linger…to think, yes, but also to feel and to experience. 

 

Enjoy this episode of I Can Do That!

God Values Rest

Blog by Alan Fadling

Good work done in the power of God’s Spirit honors God. Who could argue with that? But learning to rest well, receiving God’s gift of refreshment and renewal, is also a way to honor God. That one is harder for many of us to envision. Rest can sound lazy. It certainly sounds unproductive.

 

But rest is God’s idea. God made our bodies to need sleep in a daily rhythm. God gives the gift of sleep to those he loves. He says so in the Psalms (see 127:2). But some people turn sleep into an evil that is to be resisted or at least minimized. They brag about how little sleep they get because they only value what they accomplish in their work.

 

But I’ve discovered that resting is a good gift. In rest, I remember who God is and that God is at work in mightier and more strategic ways than I’ll ever be. In rest, I see my work as a gift to be received, enjoyed, and shared rather than a burden to be borne day after day.

 

Sabbaths

God also gives the gift of a weekly Sabbath. God even protects the edges of that Sabbath by providing guidance that invites us to stop our work as a way of making such a day special or “holy” as the Old Testament refers to it.

 

In all of this, work still made up most of the days for God’s people, but it is rather surprising how many non-workdays God built into the rhythm of their lives. God really does value rest. We see this in 

The gift of daily sleep
The gift of weekly Sabbaths
The gift of feast days throughout a year

 

God values rest so highly that he commanded the Jewish people to let their land rest one year out of every seven. In Leviticus 25, God says that the Sabbath year for the land was one in which they weren’t to plant or prune or harvest their fields for profit. They could eat what grew on its own, and in this way God would provide for them. In addition, every fifty years there was to be a kind of super Sabbath year for the people and their land called a “Jubilee.”

 

Throughout the books of Leviticus and Numbers the Jewish people were instructed to observe these Sabbaths and feast days and “do no regular work.” These days of rest were to be a pause from their usual routine.

 

How might that work today? Honestly, I don’t know for certain, but a Sabbath year for the land could certainly provide a rationale for the idea of work sabbaticals. I’m growing more convinced that God is offering us more of the gift of rest than we realize. I don’t think that workaholism is a mode we can offer in the service of God. There are moments and days and even seasons when the way to be faithful to God is to rest. Rest is good!

 

God is not watching our life like a shareholder of a public company watches quarterly productivity. While it’s true that God desires for us to bear good fruit, he invites us to bear fruit that is even better and more lasting. But what God measures and treasures as fruitfulness is different from our expectations.

 

“He Makes Us Lie Down”

Unfortunately, Israel never did well in observing or honoring the Sabbaths for the land every seven years. Resting to that extent requires a lot of trust in God’s provision.

 

Part of the reason for Israel’s exile into Babylon was that God’s people had not given the land its Sabbaths. It was God’s way of allowing the land to rest the way he had intended. There’s an almost throwaway line at the end of Second Chronicles that highlights this uncomfortable reality.

 

Jerusalem has been attacked. The temple has been looted and burned. The city walls are broken down. God had been warning his people that their continuing disobedience would be disastrous for them, and it was. But there is a surprising comment that the chronicler makes in the end:

 

“The land enjoyed its Sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah.” (2 Chron. 36:21)

 

What an amazing comment for the chronicler to make as the story closes: the land enjoyed its Sabbath rests. The people had been working that land year after year, decade after decade, century after century until the land was exhausted.

 

When Moses gave God’s people the rules about a Sabbath for the land, he also warned them what would happen if they weren’t willing to follow God’s wise guidance. Specifically, he told them a day would come when they might be driven out of the promised land. And when that happened, the land would finally get its rest (Lev. 26:34-35).

 

Centuries later, the prophet Jeremiah warned God’s people that a seventy-year captivity was coming (Jer. 25). For the seventy years Israel was in exile, the land was able to observe the Sabbath years it hadn’t had for nearly five centuries.

 

Rest Through Hardship

The whole time the land lay desolate, it was resting. I am struck by this connection between a desolate season and rest. Sometimes a season of great consolation can be very draining. When everything is going our way, we may just keep working and working until we collapse.

 

Seasons of desolation have sometimes been a place in which my own rest ethic has taken shape by necessity. Seasons of loss, experiences of burnout, or places of exhaustion have been the times when my body had no choice but to receive to receive the rest God had always been offering.

 

We may find ourselves in a challenging season. It doesn’t even have to be “our fault.” Maybe we lose our job or hit a quarter- or mid-life crisis or experience some painful loss. While such circumstances often derail our normal work life, they can also be seasons in which we receive the unexpected gift of rest.

 

We might get stuck on what sounds like punishment language in Jeremiah or from the writer of Chronicles, but I think we need to see the bigger picture. Even when God sends discipline to his disobedient and rebellious children, he has redemption in mind. After seventy years, the Jewish people would return to a land that had rested and was ready to be more productive than any of them could imagine.

 

When the circumstances of life force us to rest, that can be a darker shade of grace than we can easily see. But it is grace nonetheless. God has many ways to help us receive the gift of rest he is offering.

 

In closing, when I’m invited to talk about unhurried living, the idea of a rest ethic is implicit in much of what I teach. I’m not just recommending an unhurried life so people will get more work done from a less exhausted place. I’m calling people into the eternal living that Jesus invites us to in the Father. That forever life is rich in rest.

 

Let God shape a good and holy rest ethic in you. These days, resting at all tests our trust in God’s ability to provide for us if we honor his gift. But I’ve found that growing in this sort of trust has borne very good fruit in my life, my relationships, and my work.

 

For Reflection:

When have you faced hardships or challenges that disrupted your life and your work? Are there any ways that this might have led to unexpected rest?
In what ways might God be inviting you to deeper places of rest in your life and work? In what ways are you receiving that invitation? In what ways are you resisting?

 

Photo by Jean Carlo Emer on Unsplash

ICDT #87: Women, Work and Calling (Joanna Meyer)

 

Today I’m talking with Joanna Meyer, the author of the recently released book Women, Work and Calling. 

 

No matter what title you have or don’t have, we are all working women. People, tasks, and schedules fill our days and we all have influence in these spheres. 

 

How do you respond to God’s calling? How does God grow our soul through our work? How do we tap into our vocational power? 

 

Joanna Meyer is director of public engagement at the Denver Institute for Faith & Work, where she leads public events, hosts the Faith & Work Podcast, and founded Women, Work, & Calling, a national initiative that equips Christian women for godly influence in public life. Prior to joining the Institute, she worked in global telecom, nonprofit consulting, and campus ministry with Cru. Joanna served as associate faculty at Denver Seminary and completed a certificate in Women in Leadership through Cornell University. She contributed to Women &  Work and has written for Faith Driven Entrepreneur and various Denver Institute publications. 

UL Podcast #272: Spiritual Practices for Soul Care (Barbara Peacock)

 

One of our great concerns at Unhurried Living is caring for the souls of leaders. And one of the ways we focus on this is by helping leaders learn to care well for their own souls. It’s too easy to become so busy with work we believe God has given us, but not enjoying the life that God has given us. 

 

There are so many good spiritual practices that can help us care well for our souls. That’s why I’m pleased to have Barbara Peacock as our guest today. She is the author of Spiritual Practices for Soul Care. We had a very encouraging conversation about 40 practices she recommends in her book. 

 

Barbara Peacock is a spiritual director, author, teacher, and preacher. She is the founder of Barbara L. Peacock Ministries, committed to developing disciples through prayer, spiritual direction, soul care, mentoring, and teaching. 

 

A Word of Thanks

Message from Alan and Gem Fadling

It’s Thanksgiving week in the States. So, today, we’re simply offering our heartfelt thanks for YOU!

We share this passage from 1 John 4:7-12 (The Voice). We give thanks to God for his indescribable love, and we give thanks for you and the love you have for others.

 “My loved ones, let us devote ourselves to loving one another. Love comes straight from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and truly knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Because of this, the love of God is a reality among us: God sent His only Son into the world so that we could find true life through Him. This is the embodiment of true love: not that we have loved God first, but that He loved us and sent His unique Son on a special mission to become an atoning sacrifice for our sins. So, my loved ones, if God loved us so sacrificially, surely we should love one another. No one has ever seen God with human eyes; but if we love one another, God truly lives in us. Consequently God’s love has accomplished its mission among us.”

Thank you for being with us week by week via email. May God bless you, your family, your community, and your work.

Blessings of love and peace to you!

UL Podcast #271: The Good Work of Soul Rest

 

Today, I’m sharing the last of four episodes on the theme of rest. If you haven’t listened to the first three, I encourage you to go back. These have been some of the most important episodes I’ve offered in our six-and-a-half years as a podcast. 

 

As we continue to navigate so many changes that have come to so many of us in these last few years, I wonder how tired you feel inside. I’m not talking about the sort of tired that a nap would resolve or a good night’s sleep might address. I’m talking about a deeper tired—a weariness of soul. 

 

I’ve found myself wrestling with weariness at levels that has often surprised me. My wife, Gem, and I have both had to be far more intentional about finding the deep rest our souls need from God. In this episode, I’ll share what we’ve been learning. I’m hopeful you’ll find it helpful. 

Working on a Good Rest Ethic

Blog by Alan Fadling

One of the great challenges in leadership culture today is the failure to rest well. That idea has been percolating in my thinking and in my rhythm of life for a while now. What might it look like to cultivate a good rest ethic? We are much less familiar with this value as a culture than we are with having a good “work ethic,” but it’s just as important.

 

I don’t think what we mean by a “work ethic” today is quite the same as what the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers modeled in what we often refer to as the Protestant work ethic, which was rooted in a vision of our everyday work being a gift and calling from God. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, the religious work of priests, pastors, or monks was often regarded as qualitatively better or more holy before God than the work of common laborers.

 

Martin Luther and John Calvin saw this differently. They believed that whatever work a person does is a gift from God and that a person’s everyday labor is a divine calling. Whatever good work a person does can be seen as faithful service to God, perhaps even as a ministry. This was a gift of great encouragement to people who once thought that they could not serve God outside of religious occupations.

 

Our Modern Work Ethic

 Fast-forward from those days of the Reformation, and today’s Protestant work ethic has largely left that gracious vision behind. Instead of work being a gift and a calling of God, work itself is now the main focus. Whether our work is religious or not, it is frequently aimed at earning more money, acquiring more accolades, or achieving more personal goals rather than at honoring and serving God.

 

At the time of the Reformation, along with a sense of work being a gift from God, a weekly Sabbath day of rest was seen as an equally important gift. Sabbath days are designed more for rest than for work. That was even a normal pattern in the United States until the last few decades. For example, when I was a child in the 1960s, I can remember all the stores in my town being closed on Sundays.

 

I see signs today that many are hungry to recover what I’m calling a rest ethic, a vision that says life is more than what we can achieve or produce or accomplish. Our lives are more than our work. As Luther and Calvin suggested, our work is indeed a gift and a calling from God. Through our work, we can do good that blesses other people. But rest is equally necessary and important. Without good rest, our work can become idolatry.

 

An Ethic?

 In talking about a rest ethic, it helps to clarify the meaning of the word “ethic.” An ethic is a way of establishing what is good or bad, right or wrong, just or unjust. An ethic is our way of saying, “This is important. That is good. This is necessary. That is what matters.” So a work ethic says that good work is right and noble for us and for our world. And it is.

 

A rest ethic, then, says that rest itself is something good and right. It is not just a utilitarian strategy for getting even more work done. After all, we are human beings, not human doings. Life consists of more than the money we earn and spend. We are more than mere consumers of goods and services. We are beloved sons and daughters of a very good heavenly Father.

 

God entrusts work to you and me. Good work. Meaningful work. Work that enables us to join God in the good work he is doing every day in the world he has made. But God also gives us the gift of rest.

 

In two weeks, I’ll share more about this idea of a good rest ethic, focusing on how much God values rest.

 

For Reflection:

How do you feel about the idea of a rest ethic? Does it ring true?
In what ways have you come to value and practice rest?
In what ways do you feel invited by God further into good rhythms of rest?

 

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash