How do you rest? We all know we need rest, but that it can be hard to find, schedule, enjoy and protect. Resting doesn’t always come naturally, even though it should.
That’s what we’ll look at this week, because our strategies for rest don’t always work.
How many times have you said “I need a vacation?” Unfortunately, it’s not always the best thing for us! Did you know that studies have shown going on vacation, you face an increased risk of road or sports accidents, and depending on where you go, digestive ailments. Employees with high levels of stress show a greater incidence of colds, poor mood and minor physical ailments in the first three days of vacation.
Sometimes we need a vacation after the vacation. Earlier this year, my family had a return flight bumped on us, and we could move it to the day before or the day after, and either shorten our time away by a day or lengthen it. We loved our time away, and were having fun, but still voted to shorten it and enjoy a day or two of recovery from vacation before everyone went back to work and school.
We needed a vacation from the vacation!
Question: How do you find rest?
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We are a few weeks into a new series on “Becoming Like Family”. This is important as members of our online community begin to share the daily challenges with friends, and we begin to gather our larger community together as one church community. We won’t be bound together by a building, or institution, but rather by five commitments. We’ve talked about commitment to common learning goals, connectedness as a community of small and large groups, connectedness to God in worship, and now this week, we come to grace in lifestyle.
Those who’ve decided to follow Jesus, and walk in his path, are going to have to choose this over other paths. These choices impact many areas of life. That should be no surprise, but sometimes it’s hard to swallow. We can recoil from rules, or worry about restricted freedom.
We’ll explore that this week, but it starts with understanding why we are asked to live by, and with, grace.
But what does grace mean?
There is a classic Seinfeld episode where Elaine is in a job interview, and the interviewer shares her admiration of Jackie O, who had “grace”. Elaine tries to say, “I think I have a little grace” but the interviewer snaps back, “You can’t have a little grace, you either have it or you don’t.” Elaine backpendals, “Alright, I have no grace. I don’t have grace, I don’t want grace. Hey, I don’t even say grace.”
You can see the confusion here – what does grace even mean? Is it poise and kindness? Is it a lovely name for an old lady that is finally making a comeback? Is it a prayer before a meal?
Question: What do you think of when you hear the word grace? What does it mean?
Reminder: Last week we talked about worship, and asked you to complete our online survey about worship here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8TS7K93
Reminder: Earlier in this series, we saw the importance of reading the Bible together in sync, so our new daily bible readings start today in our mobile app and web site.
