My latest book recommendation: A Church Called Tov. Be warned. This one isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s heart-breaking and far, FAR too real in the 21st century.
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After the disaster that was 2020, everyone was hoping for a better year in 2021. Unfortunately, the year wasn’t the success I was expected. Early in the year, I began to face ministry pressures that were different from anything I’d faced before. Throughout the year, that pattern continued. Every time we’d weather another challenge, just as everything would stabilize, another tsunami of stress would wave over us again. Instead of calming down, the year grew harder and harder, culminating in December with some serious issues to resolve. But in the fiery furnace of those experiences, I learned who walks by my side through the blaze.
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Many years ago I was part of a private workshop that Dick Brogden presented to a group of global workers. Someone asked about maintaining a work-life balance in the rigors of the work that we do across the world, and his response stays with me to this day. He said that most of us were taught to believe in a hierarchical presentation of priorities in our life, in which things flow downward in a list: God, then family, then ministry, then other stuff in a diminishing proportion. But, a model of that sort just isn’t practical in real life. There will always be moments in which there is a crisis in one area that supersedes the needs of another area. So the idea of a perfect ranking of priorities will be disrupted by real life. His version was a wagon wheel, in which God is the hub. From Him, all the other priorities of life go outward like spokes, so that He is the source of wisdom and strength in every other area of my life.
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What a difference a bag of groceries can make! For most of us, the food we have in our cabinets is so abundant we don’t even use it all. Our pantries have cans and jars that have probably been there quite a while. It’s hard to even imagine a kitchen where the cabinets sit empty, and there aren’t even half-used bottles of oil or ketchup.
This month, we received a call from a woman who called to say that she was out of food. Completely. Not a bottle of oil, nor a package of pasta or rice remained in her home, and she has two sons in her household, too. Thanks to the generosity of our church, we had some imperishable items stocked up, but I also went to the grocery store to “complete” the donation for her family.
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“Be still, and know that I am God,” Psalm 46:10 tells us. I’ve been reflecting on that, because it’s so easy to *be still* here in a place like this, where I’ve purposefully chosen to get away from everything for a while and just be still. I’m usually so busy that I literally have to schedule these breaks on my calendar and on everyone else’s calendars so that I could have time away to be still. The question is how can I be still in Madrid? How do I achieve stillness in His presence while maintaining office hours and ministry schedules? I’m a driven person by nature, so I’ve had to learn how to balance the pouring-out-part of ministry and the being-still-part of abiding with God.
I’ve found four ways to keep still, no matter how hectic life gets.
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