Putting wood into a woodstove isn’t rocket science, for instance. But, we were putting wood in our stove incorrectly for much of our first winter here. We figured it was just like putting wood in a fireplace, so that’s what we did. Wrong. The stove doesn’t work efficiently if you put the logs in sideways. (We got this right because sometime in January we finally got around to reading the directions that came with the stove in August.)

Likewise, getting the fire started wasn’t always easy either. Lighting a barbecue is easy; all you have to do is douse the charcoal with lighter fluid and toss in a lit match. But, this isn’t recommended for woodstoves. (We knew this because we did initially read some of the directions that came with our stove, mainly the part that tells you how incorrect usage can result in burning your house down.) So, we learned, slowly, how to build a fire. Not having been a Boy Scout, this took time, and entailed setting off our fire alarm a number of times because on cold days the smoke from our spluttering fire poured out into the living room instead of up the chimney, which then entailed opening windows and doors and turning on our ceiling fan for ventilation. Since our intent was to warm the house and not cool it, this was annoying and not a little frustrating.

And then there’s the matter of exercise. A woodstove needs wood if it’s going to keep you warm. This entails stacking wood, splitting wood, lifting wood, and carrying wood from the woodshed into the house. Buying a cord of wood turned out to be the equivalent of joining a gym. The wood guy delivers your wood and dumps it in a big pile on your driveway; you take it from there. I enjoyed the exercise so much that it brought about my first-ever visits to a chiropractor.

However, our most recent adventure with our woodstove was what inspired this communication. As some of you may know, it can still get cold here in April, even though the days may be warm (at least by New Hampshire standards). It was a bit below freezing when we got up this morning, so a fire in the woodstove seemed a good idea. I came down, wadded up part of Sunday’s newspaper, got out the fat wood, and put a small log on the fire. However, instead of a brightly burning fire, we ended up with a smoky mess. It looked like the fire wasn’t getting the oxygen it needed, and soon we realized that there was something wrong with the flue. Tapping on the chimney above the woodstove, we soon realized that the chimney was semi-blocked and in (desperate) need of a chimney sweep. And so it was, when I later unhooked the stovepipe and looked into a chimney chock-full of creosote. Not good. Not good at all. I went out to the shed and got my chimney brush and extension poles. In no time, the chimney was cleared, and the stove was working like it should.

As I thought about the chimney and all that goes in to making a woodstove work, it struck me that it was a good analogy for the spiritual life. The spiritual life, like a woodstove, entails work. Yes, God’s grace is central. Yes, we are saved by grace (and grace alone, for all you Reformed types). Yes, no efforts of our own devising make us pleasing to God. Yes. But, as is the case with any human relationship, our relationship with God entails effort—work (not, mind you “works”). If our woodstove is to work as it should, I need to get wood, stack it, split it, lug it into the house, and then build a fire. The odd thing is, I enjoy all these things. I like—love—splitting logs. I like being outdoors and being in the fresh air as I stack wood in our woodshed or beside it. I loved being out in the woods with one of our guests, who came back a couple times last fall with his chainsaw and helped me cut down some trees out in our woods.
There’s nothing better than being active, close to God’s creation, and breathing clean fresh air.

If the woodstove entails work, it’s a kind of work that’s fun. It’s like the effort that goes in to maintaining a relationship with God. It takes discipline and effort to make time to be still and quiet, so we can be attentive to God’s presence and God’s word. It takes discipline and effort to carve out time for prayer, or study. It takes discipline—and sometimes huge effort—to turn off smart phones, dumb phones, laptops, desktops, and all-news-all-the-time hysterics. It takes effort to spend time with God and time to get to know God, yet, it’s fun. It feels good. When you get into it, it doesn’t seem like work.

But, too many of us are like our woodstove this morning. With the chimney full of creosote, the fire couldn’t get enough air. Instead of a good fire, all we got was smoke. Maybe that’s you. Maybe you’re not getting enough oxygen and your life isn’t burning as brightly and warmly as it should.

What does that mean, not getting enough oxygen? In the Bible, the same Greek word, “pneuma,” expresses the ideas of wind, breath, and Spirit. To not get enough oxygen is to not get enough of God’s breath—Spirit—into our lives, and this can happen all too easily. The creosote that blocks our spiritual oxygen supply can be confused priorities, where God’s work is more important to us than God, or where our own concerns are more important than God and His Kingdom; a misguided (and usually unconscious) belief that we are more essential to God’s Kingdom than God is; a sense that our relationship with God depends more on our zeal than God’s love for us. Creosote can be a life situation where we know God as an idea and not as a person and a presence. It can be fear of failure or fear of being in over our heads. It can be fearing people and pleasing them, rather than fearing God and pleasing Him.

Spiritual creosote can be all sorts of things. The foregoing isn’t an exhaustive list. The point is, it chokes out the spiritual fire of our lives. It is anything that prevents the Spirit of God from burning brightly and warmly within us. Just as our stove’s chimney needed a cleaning today, so too our spiritual lives need periodic cleaning as well so that our inner fire is re-kindled and refreshed. This cleaning doesn’t come with a wire brush and a pole; it comes from turning to God. Repentance is commonly taught as turning—going the wrong direction and then turning to go in the right direction. In repentance, the “turning to” is more important than the “turning from.” To turn to God in this way and to seek Him is to experience what the old hymn describes:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in his wonderful face;
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace.

Repentance is needed not just when we know we’ve sinned, but when we realize that we haven’t been paying attention. That’s probably what’s most responsible for our spiritual creosote.
As our woodstove burned better when I cleaned its chimney so the fire could get enough air, so too our lives burn more brightly and warmly when we decide to unclog our lives from all the clutter that blocks us from breathing in God’s Spirit. Too often we live with clogged chimneys. God loves us. He calls us to come away to Him, to rest and relax with Him. In such a setting, spiritual disciplines like prayer, study, meditation and reflection turn out to be peace-giving, fun even. When we choose to get away and spend some quality time with God, we start to breathe again, spiritually.

I enjoy all the work that goes with our woodstove, even when it entails trips to the chiropractor! How much more are we intended to enjoy the efforts and disciplines that go with knowing the God Jesus made known to us as Father?

They go on personal retreats so that God can use them.

Conferences give information about the way things should be or can be in a church.

Personal retreats are where God opens your eyes to the way things really are in a church—good and bad.

Conferences can give structure and shape to your vision.

Personal retreats are where you get visions, and where God nourishes them.

Conferences give you things to think about.

Retreats are times to evaluate what you’re thinking, and maybe whether you should be thinking about these things at all.

Conferences offer information.

Retreats offer private time with God, a by-product of which is discernment about the information obtained elsewhere.

And one more thing:

Conferences and workshops are easy to justify because they’re quantifiable. You can show your church leadership the conference handouts (or even a binder full of them), tell them what you’ve learned, and tell them why they should do what you learned. They will be impressed, even if they have no interest in doing what you learned. (By the way, how often has that happened? How often have you gone off to a conference to hear big-name “experts” and “consultants,” and then returned to your church to find that no one has any interest in these new-fangled ideas?)

Personal retreats are harder to justify. You don’t come back to your church with binders full of new things to do. You usually don’t have a neat “action plan” for the elders or deacons, and usually no new program(s) to implement. Instead, you’ve just “wasted” a few days spending time with the Lord, and letting Him spend time with you, and instead of coming back with a program of things to do, you may well come back with the sense that your church already has too many programs and that what’s needed are fewer programs and more “wasted” time with God for everybody! To the uninitiated (i.e., many church leadership boards), a retreat can look suspiciously like you’re being lazy.

There’s nothing wrong with conferences and workshops, of course. It’s just that pastors too often confuse them with personal retreats, and it’s important not to confuse the two. Getting information or improving one’s skills by going to a conference is a good thing to do. Going off to spend time alone with God is even better thing to do, though, because that is the context where we hear from God about what He thinks we need to know and about what skills matter to Him. God can meet us anywhere, but that meeting can be a lot easier when we set aside time specifically for that purpose.

So what is a personal retreat? A retreat is where pastors (or any Christian) can cut loose from normal life; can cut loose from the roles which their congregations use to define them and by which they define themselves; where they can cut loose from their daily “doing” and get away alone to be with God, who alone is the anchor and source of one’s identity. It’s where they can cut loose from laptops, smart phones, dumb phones, Tablets and i-Pads and spend some time off the Grid. This is particularly important. How often does “being connected” feel like being part of the “hive mind” of Star Trek’s Borg Collective? A personal retreat is the deliberate choice to go away to a quiet place to spend time alone with God as a friend with no electronic static.

This time away certainly will entail prayer, Bible study and other reading, but it will also include meditating on what you’re reading and not just reading it. It will include walks or other forms of exercise. It should, I think, include time enjoying and appreciating God’s creation. It is a time of listening for God’s quiet voice, speaking in Scripture or in the depths of one’s own heart. It is a time to enter God’s Sabbath rest. Which also means it may well be a time to sleep.

One of God’s great gifts for a pastor on a retreat is perspective. By getting away from normal activities, by getting away from the people who surround you daily both as physical and virtual presences, by getting away from the many daily demands these dear people make on your time and attention, you are blessed with perspective—you begin to see yourself, your ministry, and other people as God sees them. You begin to see how these people all fit together in God’s economy and what God is doing in their lives. Just as importantly, you begin to see what God is doing in your own life.

A great danger for pastors is to preach sermons about things of which they have no experience. One writer referred to this as sending people postcards from places they’ve never been. Personal retreats insure that preachers send postcards from places they’ve actually been to! They help insure that what we preach is what we live. Retreats are where pastors’ lives are nourished, so that when they speak of the “abundant life” Jesus promised, their hearers will experience that live in them without having to be told about it. They are a tool God uses to transform pastors so that their whole life becomes a winsome evangelistic sermon to the world.

The issue here is one of priorities. God wants us to learn and grow, so keep on going to conferences and workshops! However, more than that, he wants us to spend quality time with Him so that our lives and ministries are the overflow of that relationship. In other words, God wants our relationship with Him to grow, not just our skills or knowledge.

It matters that pastors know the difference between a conference and a retreat. The two do two different things. Both are important, but one, I think, is the better of the two. Pastors who attend conferences and mistake them for retreats, can quickly become overly busy, adrenalin-fueled, knowledge-driven, burned-out “Martha’s” who “are worried and upset about many things.” Jesus’ words about her sister, Mary, suggest the priority of retreats—of getting away, being still, and listening to the voice of Christ: “Only one thing is needed, “ Jesus said to Martha. Mary “has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:38-42, NIV). In the final analysis, only one thing truly is needed, and that’s God, up close and personal.

Much the same can be said of the birth of Christ. Christmas marks the beginning of God’s remodeling of creation, and more specifically, of us, created in God’s image but now sin-sick and in desperate need of fundamental and widespread remodeling. God enters the world in the form of a baby much like the hammer rips into sheetrock.

We can get very sentimental about Christmas and the birth of the baby Jesus. There’s something comforting about shepherds with their cuddly sheep, and something exotic about eastern strangers following a star and bearing expensive presents. Luke’s angels thrill us like a heavenly fireworks display erupting in the dark Bethlehem sky. We dutifully and even reverently welcome God’s son Christmas Eve with lit candles and singing “Silent Night”—all is calm, all is bright.

But yet, as beautiful and comforting as all this is, it is like a hammer going through sheetrock. God has committed Himself to a major undertaking, a major reworking of a creation fallen on hard times. God’s people had become distracted from God’s heart by habit, custom, and tradition. Humanity at large had wondered off, seeking God but finding idols instead. Empires established order and even peace, but it was peace and order nourished by the blood of those who got in the way. God began making changes, and for the new to come, the old has to be dismantled and taken away. If the night was indeed silent in that Bethlehem stable, it was a silence in which the foundations of creation were shaken, where God takes up residence in his creation through a baby lying in a Judean manger. The hammer rips into sheetrock, and Caesar and Herod give way to a new King, and religiosity gives way to an immediate and intimate relationship between Creator and creature.

One who understood much of this was Simeon. Simeon, unlike Mary and Joseph, and unlike the shepherds and magi, is a bit-player in Luke’s story. We don’t find him in our crèches or on our Christmas cards. But, it is Simeon who gets it; he understands the hammer ripping into sheetrock aspect of Christ’s birth. He knows the baby Mary and Joseph bring to the Jerusalem Temple is God’s salvation, “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” and “glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:30-32). But even more, he sees that this baby will grow up and change everything:

“This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2:34-35)

Mary too understands the hammer ripping into sheetrock, and so does John the Baptist. In Mary, God begins reconstructing creation and human hearts, scattering “the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,” bringing down “the powerful from their thrones “and “lifting up the lowly”. No longer will the rich matter simply because they’re rich: “He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 2:51-53). John, Christ’s advance man, warns us, “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9).

God comes to us in Christ to reconcile the world, Paul tells us, so that “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:19, 17). God sent His Son not that we might be nice people, but new people. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, who blesses peacemakers, tells us that he comes “to bring fire to the earth,” and asks, rhetorically, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace on the earth? No. I tell you, but rather division!” (Luke 12:49, 51). Jesus comes, and His remodeling work begins, as remodeling work always does, with demolition—the demolition of bad habits, unhealthy relationships, and spiritual indifference. Our share of this demolition work is what the Bible calls “repentance.” It is getting rid of our old, worn out and even rotten priorities and desires so that the remodeling—the building of new priorities, new relationships and new desires—can begin. Since we are the handiwork of Jesus, the carpenter, it is he who breaks up the old, freeing us from it, for the sake of making us a “new creation.”

It is the birth of this Carpenter we celebrate this month. Open your heart to him, and let him sink his hammer into the sheetrock of your tangled desires and misplaced priorities, and let him rebuild your heart. Let him make you what God intended you to be.

Randy Thompson
Originally published in the newsletter of
Poquonock Community Church
December, 2009
Windsor, CT

The sweet and gentle crèche of home and church looks different this year. It lies in the shadow of the story we do our best to ignore—the story that is never, ever part of the church Christmas pageant. The world into which the baby Jesus is born is world of horrors as well as joy. Where murder and gift-giving breathe the same air, where one can sometimes hear angels singing, but also see Herod’s soldiers seeking parents’ joy with drawn swords.

In the face of such mindless, murderous evil, what can be said? What explanation can there be? And if there is an explanation, does it really matter? Reason stands helpless and hapless in the face of horrors like this; it breaks apart like an old man’s tooth breaking on a bone. It offers no emotionally insulating explanation when it faces with the thought—or reality—of a school full of the bodies of little ones. We are left with emotions raw as an exposed nerve on an icy Connecticut winter day.

And, what can we do? How can we help? How does one fix a heart that isn’t just broken but shattered? What does one say that makes the pain go away? All words in the face of such loss are empty. Better, like Job’s comforters, to sit silently in Job’s presence, and resist the urge to offer explanations for what can’t be explained. Better to resist the urge to theologize and speculate about God’s purposes in mass murder.

And yet. . . and yet, we don’t have the luxury of ignoring God or blaming God, because the God we meet in Jesus is the God who lost a good son, a beloved son. A God who hears His Son cry out “Why have You forsaken me?” while slowing dying on a cross. We can’t ignore God because if we stay with the Christmas story, if we follow it to its end, we arrive at murder by crucifixion, and we discover that in Christ God’s heart was nailed to a cross. Such a God we can’t ignore.

The Gospel of Matthew begins by identifying the baby about to be born as “Immanuel, God with us.” If this “God with us” was only the God of stars and wise men, of shepherds and angels and friendly barnyard animals, then this isn’t a God who makes any difference when burying a child. But the nativity stories don’t exhaust the meaning of “Immanuel.” As Jesus’ story unfolds, so does the meaning of “God with us”:

Jesus is betrayed by Judas. Immanuel.
Peter denies him. Immanuel.
The rest of the disciples flee. Immanuel.
Jesus is arrested. Immanuel.
Jesus is scourged and beaten. Immanuel.
Jesus is condemned to death. Immanuel.
Jesus is nailed to a cross. Immanuel.
Jesus suffers. Immanuel.
Jesus dies. Immanuel.

The one who is Isaiah’s “Suffering Servant,” the man of sorrows and acquainted with suffering, is Immanuel, God with us.

And, if we press on with the story of Jesus to its real end, we find that Easter is the fullest and greatest example of God with us. Jesus died, and God was there. Jesus cried out to his Father, “Why have you forsaken me?”, and three days later God answers his prayer. God doesn’t forsake him. The ultimate Immanuel: The empty tomb.

Maybe this year we should get past the “sexist” aspect of “God Rest Ye, Merry, Gentlemen” and sing it in a deeper, more somber way:

God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray.
O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

The slaughter of the innocents is also a time, a profoundly hard time, to experience not the joy the carol describes, but certainly the comfort. We need to hear these words in light of one of our Lord’s beatitudes: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Amid the slaughter of the innocents, this comfort of God is no small thing. The One who comforts is One who knows the loss of a child.

In times such as this, comfort is all that matters. What we say doesn’t matter. What we think doesn’t matter. What matters is God’s comfort. Somehow, that’s enough. Finally, that’s all there is. “My grace is sufficient,” God tells Paul. We emotionally fall into the bottom of a dark, deep pit from which we can see no hope of escape, and yet there, miraculously, we meet the God who comforts. With more hope than the Psalmist, Christ makes us bold to say, “If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.”

Tidings of comfort indeed. And, in time, perhaps joy.

Immanuel.

Randy Thompson, Forest Haven
Bradford, New Hampshire

Some winters seem as if they will never end. Even the memory of green foliage fades. There are seasons like that in our life with God. We get so distracted with the busyness of our lives, even during the Christmas season, or maybe especially in the Christmas season, that even the memory of real contact with God is hard to recall.

Isaiah was inspired to see God’s salvation in the turning of the season. For Israel it had been a long hard winter of oppression by nations near and far. There seemed to be as little hope for Israel as there was for the royal line that appeared finished. David, son of Jesse, established that line and Solomon brought it to a peak of grandeur. Now little remained, a dead stump. But God allowed Isaiah to see in his mind’s eye a green shoot growing out of that old dead wood. God was going to do some-thing great by the power of the Spirit.

Followers of Jesus, who is the ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision, need never despair, of themselves, of their church, or of their community. God is always at work by the Spirit, bringing the new life made possible by Jesus. You may feel like an old stump, your church may seem as if it is approaching the end of its days, and the difficulties your community faces may seem overwhelming, but that fresh green shoot has come out from the stock of Jesse. His spirit is at work:
The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The spirit of counsel and might,
The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

PRAYER: Lord, I believe, help my unbelief! Give me a glimpse of what Isaiah saw and help me to take heart.

Joe Delahunt, Pastor, First Baptist Church in New Haven, CT, and Forest Haven Board Member

Stuck between the two biggest retail holidays of the year, Halloween and Christmas, it’s become something of a time-out in the holiday season, like the Two Minute Warning in an NFL game. Increasingly, Thanksgiving has become a time to rest before heading out at some insane hour in the middle of the night to get deals on what have replaced dreams of sugarplums in our nation’s collective letter to Santa, namely flat-screen TV’s, iPads, microwave ovens, and Crock-Pots.

This really is too bad, because all the Black Friday stuff on sale can’t compare with what Thanksgiving offers for free.

Like a hit of cocaine, Black Friday offers a jolt of excitement and a kind of happiness, but it’s happiness with a shelf-life. That great flat-screen TV, for example, which went for nearly nothing at K-Mart, soon becomes merely a purveyor of short-lived network shows, reality shows filled with obnoxious, self-important semi-celebrities, and nitwits shouting past each other on cable news “discussion” programs. That great iPad with so many ways of staying in touch, now links you to a steady stream of spam, inspirational emails with pictures of cats, and calls from people you wish didn’t have your phone number. And then there’s the microwave, which now is used to periodically warm semi-digestible frozen meals. The Crock-Pot, of course, sits forlornly in a closet, forgotten.

Thanksgiving, if we pay closer attention to it, offers not just happiness, but joy. It offers not a jolt of excitement, but a way of making ourselves happy for the rest of our lives, and maybe even longer. Instead of focusing our attention on what we don’t have and what we need to make us happy, Thanksgiving focuses our attention on what we do have. The nice thing about Thanksgiving is that we don’t need to get up in the middle of the night and go to some ugly big box store on the edge of town. All we need is a working brain and a few quiet moments. Specifically, all we need is that part of our brain in charge of memory. Spend a few moments remembering. Maybe you’ll remember that sixth grade math teacher who believed in your mathematical abilities more than you did. Or that little league coach who thought you’d be a good pitcher, and taught you how to throw a really good curveball. Or that college professor who insisted that you consider grad school, which in turn launched you in your current career. And what about all the others—your parents, spouse, siblings, grandparents, Sunday School teachers, and your piano teacher?

As you let your memory wander down the both the interstates and back by-ways of your life, something remarkable happens. The memory of all these people starts to warm you, and suddenly you start feeling that you’d like to thank every one of them for their contribution to your life. And, as that feeling grows, you notice something really remarkable—you start feeling something that the word “happiness” doesn’t quite describe—could this be joy?
The problem for most of us is that we think of Thanksgiving as a noun, which is a person, place or thing. In this case, it’s thing, a holiday where we eat turkey and watch football. There’s nothing wrong with either of those, of course, but to think of Thanksgiving as a noun is to miss the point of it, because Thanksgiving is really about thanks-giving, and that’s a verb, which means that it’s something we do.

Happiness isn’t something that just happens to us. It’s not a Blue Light Special at K-Mart, nor is it something we can find on sale at Walmart. Happiness is a disciplined memory, a memory that latches on to those people whom we love and who love us, to those wonderful people in our past who made our lives better, and who made us better people. Such a disciplined memory doesn’t just happen, of course; memory needs training. But, the good news is, it’s easier to discipline our memory than it is to go to the local mall. Really, all we need is a little bit of time, and a little bit of quiet. Why not give it a try?

Shut off that flat-screen TV you got last year, shut off the iPad and the iPod too, ignore the phone, and find a quiet, comfortable place. Then just sit there for five or ten minutes. Turn your mind loose. Think your way back into your past, and let the memories come.

Are all our memories good? Of course not. For example, my seventh and eighth grade teachers to this day warm my heart and give me joy. My fifth and sixth grade teachers I’d like to throttle. But, you know what? Yes, they made fifth and sixth grade miserable for me, but why should I focus my memory on them and let them spread their misery into my adult years? In light of all the good people that touched my life, they have become phantoms that have faded away, and become part of the darkness that makes the blessing people in my past shine all the brighter. Memory, I think, is meant for joy, but you have to aim it in the right direction.

One more thing, and this is important. If “thanks-giving” is a verb, then this of all verbs is one with a direct object—someone receives the action of the verb. Think about it. There is always another word that follows “Thank,” and that is “you.” If memory is the raw material that is shaped into gratitude, and if gratitude is the raw material for joy, then expressing that gratitude increases that joy, because now it is shared with another.

And, when we reflect a little bit further, we start to notice the pattern of blessing in our lives, and that causes us to see gratitude in an eternal context. Especially when we recall coincidences and chance meetings and good timing that ended up changing our lives. If we concentrate on it, we see the pattern of blessing is even bigger than the sum of the people who have touched us. Then, gratitude becomes something more than it is—it becomes worship. Take a close look at the pattern of blessing in your life; if you do, you’ll see the outline, in faint form, of heaven.

A belated happy Thanksgiving to you, with the hope that you experience Thanksgiving as a verb! And may God bless you with good memory and a vision of that pattern of blessing unique to your life!

I’m not saying that to be insulting, mind you, but I know from 20 some odd years in pastoral ministry that being “essential” is the unexamined motive that keeps many of us on the ministry merry-go-round, where we go round and round doing all the right leadership things, while failing to notice that we haven’t really gone anywhere—where we end the day with a sense of having been really busy, but unsure as to what we just did.

The problem with feeling “essential” is that the merry-go-round of ministry becomes a prison, where our real self becomes locked in a maximum security role characterized by knee-jerk cheerfulness, false-front compassion, pious posturing, and inspiring preaching that is more about feeling good than being good. Where we find that we’re alone with our thoughts, and realize we don’t have any. Where talking about prayer has replaced prayer.

At this point, in pieces like this, the author (in this case, me) usually starts citing the latest research on how burned-out many pastors are. I am, of course, equipped to do this, if you like, having just come across yet another study about pastors and discouragement. But, chances are, you don’t need another study or survey to tell you what you already know. We’re swimming in gloomy data, and if the data doesn’t discourage you, your next elders’ meeting probably will if the previous hasn’t already. (Or if all is well with the powers that be, there’s always last Sunday’s attendance and financial summary, but let’s not go there.)

Can it be that what keeps us in place, ministry-wise, isn’t so much dedication but arrogance, a sense of self-importance where no one can do it better than we can (whatever “it” may be)? A pride-full attitude that we’re essential, that God really isn’t speaking to anyone else in our church as clearly as He’s speaking to us? That everything will fall apart without us?

Someone who really is essential, someone without whom everything really would fall apart, is Jesus, and Jesus went missing for a few days now and then, especially when it looked as though he would be so successful that everyone would make him the messiah they wanted, the one on the white horse, sword in hand, who would drive out the Roman administration and establish the Kingdom of God as just another imperial power. John tells us that Jesus withdrew into the mountains after miraculously feeding the five thousand, knowing that the people were seeking to make him king (John 6:15). Instead of building momentum and creating a successful mass movement, he went into hiding. Instead of starting the First Century equivalent of a TV ministry, he spent time with his Abba.

Likewise, after driving out an evil spirit at the Capernaum synagogue, and then after healing many at the home of Peter and Andrew, he disappears to a “solitary place.” Then, when told that everyone was looking for him, he goes somewhere else instead of returning to his success (Mark 1:21-29). Here is someone who, by all accounts, is a successful religious leader, but here is also someone who is marching to the beat of a drum different than the one many of us hear.

The drumbeat that energizes Jesus’ march to Calvary is the desire to stay close to his Father and entrust the consequences of his obedience to Him. Jesus was a busy man, and, at times, very busy indeed. Yet, Luke repeatedly tells of Jesus going off, away from ministry, to spend time alone with his Father. His busyness was rooted in prayer so that what he did and said reflected his quiet, alone-times with his Father. Jesus was more concerned about staying in relationship with his Father than in activity for its own sake, even ministry activity. Knowing his Father, he trusted Him with the consequences of his obedience and didn’t need to be “essential.” As a result, he was not the smothering presence so many of us pastors can be.

Jesus did not seek to dominate or control. He sent out his disciples to do the same work he did. He sent out the seventy in Luke to do the same. With the cross imminent, he tells his disciples on the night of his betrayal that it is “to their advantage” that he goes away (John 16:7, ESV), despite the fact that they will be facing persecution (John 15:18-25, 16:1-2). Jesus’ faith in his Father was such that he was able to entrust his disciples into His care and let go of his life. Instead of controlling and holding on to his ministry and to his disciples, he lets them go. He trusts the Spirit of God to complete the work he started.

As busy as Jesus was, he made sure that his busyness was rooted in his prayer life, and not vice versa. Why is it so hard for us to be like Jesus in this regard? Why is it, pastors, that we hold on to ministry activities with a death-grip, unable to “let go and let God” as a former prayer partner of mine often said. Truly, as you read John’s account of Jesus’ last conversation with his disciples, you certainly get the sense of someone who had deeply “let go and let God.” It’s almost as though we follow Christ but forget that he let go of his ministry in order to die, trusting God with the results. Jesus’ ministry was one of obedience that came out of a deep relationship with his Father, not one of doing what he thought his Father would appreciate.

Jesus’ ministry transcended busyness. He could leave the crowds behind and even his disciples so he could spend time with his Father. That’s why we see his Father in him: “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9). What do people see when they look at us? Do they see a series of pious activities and a lot of religious busyness, or do they see Christ taking shape in us?

Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” One could rightly paraphrase his words by saying, “Where you invest your time, there will your heart be also.” When we invest our time in activities alone, even with the best of intentions, we end up playing a role rather than being the person God created us to be, and our joy withers and our heart becomes brittle and tired. When we invest our time in knowing God first, then we find that Jesus was right about the Spirit of God flowing out of his like a river of living water (John 7:38). Then, we experience Isaiah’s words:

“Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles. . . “
(Isaiah 40:30-31)

This feels like wasted time, except that it isn’t. I am enjoying three hours of being alone, with no one to talk to, and no one to listen to. My cell phone is quiet, and I don’t have access to the internet freak show and carnival. Whatever conversations are going on here at the Honda place are not my concern. In short, this is quality time. It’s quiet, I sense God’s presence, and there are no distractions.

This time is as much about my personal maintenance as it is about car maintenance. Unlike our Fit, I don’t need my oil replaced or my tires rotated or my fluids topped off. I do need, however, a time to call a time-out from my life, be still, and get perspective. In particular, I need to get God’s perspective.

It amazes me how many people—pastors included—wouldn’t think of ignoring their cars’ well-being, but don’t consider their own. If you don’t maintain your car, it gradually starts falling apart. The old, broken-down oil gunks-up the engine. The brakes start to depend more on luck than on the drums, and the engine starts to wheeze like an old emphysema patient. The car ends up scrap metal before it’s time.

Much the same can happen to pastors who fail to stop and pull over for maintenance. They get so caught up in the trip they forget they need rest-stops. Since it doesn’t feel like they’re going anywhere or doing anything worthwhile if they stop and creatively do “nothing,” they stay on the ministry interstate going 70 miles per hour, not realizing that all the postponed life-maintenance has rendered them unsafe at that speed. They end up crashing into recalcitrant deacon boards, antagonists, lethargic parishioners, and programs that looked good on paper but turned out to be soul-suckers.

Part of the problem is, life-maintenance doesn’t seem “spiritual.” Preaching is “spiritual.” Counseling is “spiritual.” So are worship leading, committee-leading, and visiting shut-ins. Days crammed with such activities (and others like them) make pastors feel good about themselves, whether they’ve accomplished anything significant or not. Yet, there’s that nagging, uncomfortable question we try to push aside, “Where was God in all of this activity?” Needing to feel like we’re accomplishing things, we fill our lives with ministry busy-ness, running from pillar to post, needing to feel needed, needing to justify our ministry through activity. In the fields ready for harvest, we labor as though God is an absentee landlord. The flesh is willing, but the Spirit is weak.

Maybe, what’s genuinely spiritual is to seek solitude and silence where God can look under the hood of our hearts. Is this self-absorption, a distraction from “ministry”? Is taking time for a spiritual tune-up a snare of the devil, a distraction from whatever it is we think God wants us to be doing at the moment?

The Bible tells us that spiritual maintenance work on our lives matters. In regard to this, I recently stumbled across one of the least noticed exhortations in the New Testament. Paul, saying farewell to the church leaders in Ephesus in Acts 20, charges them to “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers . . .” (Acts 20:28, ESV). For most pastors, perhaps, our eyes focus on the latter part of that verse, and don’t notice the first part. But doing so, we fail to notice the exhortation—the command—to “Pay careful attention to yourselves.” Vigilant for the health and spiritual well-being of the flock, we pastors are prone to checking everyone’s eyes for “specks” while ignoring the logs in our own eyes (Matthew 7:1-4).
This command to the Ephesian elders to “pay attention to yourselves” isn’t a one shot commandment either. Paul tells the Galatians not only to restore transgressors, but to “keep watch on yourself” too (Galatians 6:1, ESV). The odd little book of Jude tells us to “build yourselves up in your most holy faith” and to “keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 20,21, ESV). On the night of his betrayal, Jesus asks his disciples, “Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Mark 14:37-38, ESV). Along the same lines, our Lord tells us not to indulge in end time speculation, but instead to live prepared for his coming by staying awake (Mark 13:32-37).

“Build yourselves up.” “Keep watch on yourself.” “Pay careful attention to yourselves.” “Stay awake.” If we need clear proof-texts to justify getting off the merry-go-round of compulsive ministry, here they are! But wait, as the infomercials say, there’s more, and that is the example of Jesus.

Jesus heard God tell him, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” and then headed into the desert alone to face the devil (Luke 3:22, 4:1ff, ESV). He left a successful ministry in Caperneum and secluded himself in a “desolate place” to pray (Luke 4:42, Mark 1:35, ESV). The night before he chose the twelve, “he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12, ESV). He left the crowds behind to pray (Luke 9:18, 28ff). It is while watching Jesus pray that the disciples asked him to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1-13). And, of course, he went away, to the Mount of Olives to pray the night he was betrayed (Luke 22:39ff). Repeatedly, Jesus withdrew from active ministry to spend time with his Father. He did not let himself be driven by people’s needs or by ministry opportunities. Jesus lived in an intimate relationship with his Father because he actively sought him out. In a sense, ministry took a back seat to spending time with his Father, who was the source of all he said and did (See John 4:31-34; 5:19-20, 30, 36; 6:38; 7:16-18, 28; 8:25-30, 38, 42; 9:4-5; 10:18, 25, 32, 37-38.) If anyone kept a watch on himself, Jesus certainly did. And, he made it clear to his disciples that they should do the same. After the twelve come back from a preaching ministry, and they are all so busy they don’t have a chance to eat, Jesus tells them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (Mark 6:31, NIV).

It’s comforting to know that life maintenance is no more mysterious than an oil change. I once met an Episcopal priest who ran a retreat center in Connecticut. He told me that the first spiritual counsel he gave people when they arrived for a retreat was to take a nap. This doesn’t seem to be very spiritual, but think about it. A “Sabbath rest” is one of the Ten Commandments. Hebrews invites us to enter into “God’s rest.” (Hebrews 4:1-11). Our Lord offers rest to those who are “weary and burdened” (Matthew 11:28, NIV). The nice thing about rest is, anyone can do it! You don’t need a seminary education to rest; you don’t even need to be all that bright. All you need to do is recognize that the Kingdom of God can function quite well without you for a time.
Rest is more than cessation of activity. It’s a time to withdraw and get perspective, to discern where God is active, and where less so. Sports teams illustrate this clearly. A basketball team, for example, will call a time out when it’s down two points and there is five seconds left on the clock. They call a time out so they can rest and focus on what they need to do. Do they go for two points, and a tie, or for three points and the game? You certainly don’t want to keep the clock running and try to figure it out as the those last five seconds count down! Yet, people—pastors—fail to take time outs under pressure and, distracted and frazzled, attempt to make decisions about their lives and the lives of others.

From a place of rest, one’s problems look different than they do in the thick of things when we’re hurried, distracted, and worried. From the place of God’s rest, all mountain-sized problems reveal themselves to be considerably smaller, if not molehills. Life’s journey is a lot easier when you perceive the mountains you think you need to climb as God’s molehills.

How do we rest? One of the great paradoxes of the spiritual life is that we often need to work at resting. It takes effort to say “no” to compulsive activity and constant mulling over our lists of things to do. It takes effort to plan and schedule Sabbaths. Realizing that we need to work at resting, here are some practical suggestions:

• Rest begins when we realize that God’s purposes are accomplished through God’s power and not our own, and that the only person who is not expendable in the Kingdom of God is God.
• Rest is letting go: Letting go of our own sense of self-importance, our sense that no one can take our place, and our fear that things will fall apart without us.
• Rest entails going away, geographically and (therefore) mentally: A friend once explained to me the difference between owning a lake house and renting one. To own a lake house is work; to rent one is vacation. In other words, rest happens when you are away from your place and are somewhere else in someone else’s place. To rest is to step out of one’s normal routine. (I find that it’s hard for me to rest when I’m at home or at my office. At home, quiet time quickly becomes a time for me to notice all the things that need to be done at the house. At the office, quiet time quickly degenerates into sermon-planning.)
• Rest entails unplugging—smart phones, dumb phones, laptops and desktops: To stay connected is to stay in the rat-race. If you go off to rest and leave on your smart phone, you’re simply taking all the distractions, all the busy-ness and all the craziness with you. If there are people who can’t live without you, they’re in big trouble and so are you. (Read the previous bullet again.)
• Rest is about spending time with God, not planning future activities or second-guessing previous decisions.
• Rest needn’t always be a “spiritual” activity; shutting off your brain and sitting by a lake is worth doing for its own sake. (God often sneaks up on you in situations like this!)
• Rest should be opportunistic: Time spent in the waiting room of a doctor or dentist, or spent waiting for your car to be fixed, can be Sabbath time. (Hints: If there’s a TV in the waiting area, and you’re alone, turn it off! Or, ask if there’s an empty cubicle where you can wait. The nice people at the Honda dealership have been very obliging in finding me quiet corners. Besides, there’s free popcorn in the sales area!)

Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Mark 6:31 (New International Version)

It’s far too easy for us to get on the treadmill of activity and think that we can’t get off. No one seems to have enough time. Why is it, for instance, that so many retired people feel that they are busier now than before they retired? One answer, I think, is that modern life is so full of options and distractions. As a result it has become increasingly difficult to focus our time and energies. One example of this is our ever-growing use of technologies like the internet and cell phones. They have been eating away at what little remains of the margin in our lives.

During our recent week by a lake in New Hampshire we were away from our professional roles and the many things around the house that call for attention. Without internet access and spotty cell phone coverage, we had many fewer options for how we spent our time. Suddenly, we had time for more conversation, leisurely meals, swimming, sitting in the sun, reading, thinking and praying. We were so enjoying these things that we mostly ignored one of the other big distractions in modern life, the television. In this protracted time of relative isolation and quiet I experienced a restfulness and peace I had long been missing.

My point is not that vacations are necessary for us. For most people throughout history a vacation has been a luxury beyond reach. At the same time there have always been people who have achieved a certain poise and peace while living productive and busy lives.

Jesus was such a person. His life was filled with passion for his mission and intense labor in serving people. And yet the gospels give the impression of a gracious person who always had time for the people he encountered. He had urgency about his mission and yet appeared unhurried at the same time. His secret was a rhythm of engagement and withdrawal.  There was a quiet space at the center of his daily life where he rested and prayed. It was there in communion with God that he found his passion, strength and peace.

Jesus invited and invites his followers to do the same. “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest,” he says.

The story is told of a man laboring with much difficulty and at great length sawing down a tree. A friend who came along observed him for a while and realized that the saw was dull, making the work much harder and time-consuming. He suggested, “Why don’t you stop and sharpen the saw?” The man replied, “I can’t, I’ve got to finish this job.”

Why don’t we stop to sharpen the saw? Our bodies, minds and spirits need to be maintained and refreshed. If we take care of them we will be of greater service to God and others and happier ourselves.

One of the basic truths of the Christian Gospel is that self-help, in relation to God, is virtually no help at all. Try as we might, our efforts to storm heaven by our moral or spiritual effort leave us as earth-bound caterpillars. Some might fool other caterpillars into thinking they’ve somehow arrived in heavenly places, but when you pierce the appearances, you only find Pharisees huffing and puffing to keep up those appearances— they’re caterpillars pretending to fly!

The Bible, if it is about nothing else, is about who God is and who we are, and when you look at who God is and who we are, we find that there is a huge gulf between us that no amount of huffing and puffing self-help can bridge. To come into God’s presence is to have every thought, every motive, and every action exposed for what it is. No wonder no one can see God’s face and live! (Exodus 33:20).  In other words, there are no flying caterpillars (Romans 3:23, 6:23).

This gap between holiness and helplessness is unbridgeable, at least on our side of the chasm. However, with God, it’s a different matter. The good news that is at the heart and soul of the Good News is that God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. . .” (Exodus 34:6-7, ESV—the Old Testament, if you please!)  Because God’s love is not co-dependent love—it “will by no means clear the guilty (Exodus 36:7)—it accepts and embraces us, while changing us completely—from our depths.

The Gospel tells us that God’s love comes to us in Jesus Christ, and supremely in his death and resurrection. God’s notion of self-help requires the self to die. The only way the caterpillar can become a butterfly is to die. As God pokes and probes our desires and motives, we find ever darker shadows. Like an old, decaying house that must be torn down before it can be rebuilt, we are selves that can only be healed by dying. That may sound odd, but it is at the heart of what Jesus tells Nicodemus, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” (John 3:6-7, ESV)  In other words, butterflies fly, and caterpillars can’t. If you’re going to fly, the caterpillar must die first.

There can be no resurrection apart from dying, just as there can be no such thing as a flying caterpillar. The issue is, how badly do you want to fly? How badly do you want the resurrection life God offers us? Christ’s death is for us; his resurrection is for us. To receive Christ into one’s life is to be baptized into his death. In the words of the Bible, “We were buried . . . with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4, ESV)

As one writer put it, “When Christ died for our sins and rose again, He took away the only thing that separates us from God—unforgiven sin. His resurrection proves that He is life, and it proves the genuineness of the eternal life He offers us if we come to Him for salvation. . . the power that raised Christ from the dead is the exact same power we experience as we walk in Christ, the giver of eternal life.” (Henry & Melvin Blackaby, “Experiencing the Resurrection”).

Image courtesy of Zorba the Geek used under Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 2.0.