.: burden as life :.

Why we didn't catch it any sooner than this is beyond me. All I know now is that this is not healthy for us to be living like this. In fact, this isn't even living. It is more like survival, just barely keeping our lips above the waves of tasks to be done that crash over us. Something in my soul has never allowed me to settle down and bear under this weight. Rather, it has been crying out for release, for more help and a deeper sense of our future. Everything can be accomplished if we will continue to focus on His strength and ability to bring us through this. And I am more sure than many others that this will serve to make us into what He desires us to become. But this gradual disintegration of grace and peace in our lives is setting off all kinds of alarms, and only now do I have the ears to hear them. I think God may finally be offering insight into entering that new context of understanding the climate of these events. We assume the kind of busyness that this world exalts, but it is costing us both intimacy and rest. Tiredness seems to be the closest thing to our hearts, but they cannot thrive and grow if we allow them to remain there, in such an absense of faith and hope.

Why have we been allowing ourselves to stay planted in this spirit of restlessness? If we keep up our obedience to such demands, we will miss out on the joy of seeing Him work beyond ourselves. Where is our faith in times such as these? Is there anything more typical of our everyday lives? Yet we are more prepared to excuse it as temporary and part of our current path. Would we really confess that He was not prepared for what laid around the bend? He can give us that rest if we would only hold out for such, and refuse to be satisfied with our enslavement to such elements. This is a natural part of our createdness. We are defined as those who have been made for that kind of space in our lives, a space that the world only seeks to despise and remove. Does our fullness really lie in the accomplishment of everything that we have exalted to such a high place in our lives? Needless to say, that is a scary place to continue within. We feel burdened because we are burdened. And we do ourselves a tremendous disservice when we create excuses for living like this.

This Father we know is one who longs to have us daily experience His presence as the Prince of Peace. Our worthiness does not lie in staying busy, becoming more efficient, or remaining engaged in elements that demand more of us than is appropriate. We must see how we are collapsing under this burden of busyness, this weight of "getting it all done". Life does lie beyond our success or failure. And maybe we would be better off to watch it crush us so that He might restore us to where we once were. Being still and acknowledging His divinity means that we intentionally find calmness in our days. Maybe we are just allowing ourselves to be caught up in the in-between, amidst our journey from here to there. We will reach where we headed out for, no question about that. And maybe it won't be everything we were hoping for, though I imagine the beauty will come through in the incidentals of it's unfolding. But we simply cannot allow it to rob from us the pleasure of our fellowship and love.

We will repeat back to one another that it will all get done. We will see time and again that we will make it through - not just survive, but find deeper roots on the other side. And this too will bear the fingerprints of His leading and fashioning within us the image of His Son. But to do that, we must lay down the burdens we have embraced at the times that call to us, and enter into the places in which we find His glorious restoration. This is, after all, the last place that we would want to lose sight of His control over Creation!