Before each school year begins, I set aside time to reevaluate priorities and begin designing the yearly schedule.
As I contemplate the months ahead, God keeps bringing me back to the reality that He has provided humanity with certain rhythmic boundaries:
- The setting and rising of the sun paired with the expense of our own energy were designed to bind us to sleep.
- Our hungers and cellular need for nutrients bind us to eat.
- Our need for relationships and touch bind us to family and community.
In short, the mortality of our bodies is designed to receive His good gifts of life: gifts of rest, of food, of community, of essentials. These boundaries and gifts alike remind us that He is God and we are not.
And yet…we insist on pushing the boundaries. We routinely neglect the rest, nourishment, and relationships that we so desperately need.
We act like the self-sufficient, all-wise gods we want to be.
But then, it inevitably catches up with us. We crash. We over-eat from over-hunger. We pay the price for not nurturing those relationships. We are shown for the impotent false gods we are.
However, when we can regularly respect those boundaries, Jesus issues invitations to take a divine walk with Him past the markers. To watch and pray. To fast. To spend extended time in solitude.
We occasionally need this reminder: life resides in God’s rhythms. When we push past the boundaries, we find ourselves enslaved by our own humanness…but within them, there is freedom to truly thrive.
May each of us thank God for these gifts and pray for the wisdom and grace to fully receive them.
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