You got rhythm?

What I love more than anything is Saturday morning before anyone else has got up. I find it truly relaxing; there is no need to get into work, breakfast can wait until I decide and I can enjoy God’s company without the interruption of clocking in time.

Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly… "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." Matt 11:27-30 (Msg)

Last week I took a day off work so that I could spend some time listening to God and getting some ideas for the next fusion event down on paper.

Even though I woke up at 6am, just as I would on a work day, it felt great. I had decided to spend the day in the church so that I did not distract myself because I imagined that would take me all day to get some ideas together, but that was not to be the case.

I began with a time of worship and prayer before spending some time reading God’s Word. I then began to put away a lot of the materials from the last fusion event (which I had not yet tidied up) so that they could easily be used by others in the church. Then Derek & Margaret turned up to clean the church, I had already decided to help them so I went and joined them. Margaret cleaned, I hovered and Derek tidied.
After all of this I sat down to work on fusion. I asked God what He wanted to do through the event and in no time at all His ideas were flowing; pages of sketches, notes and ideas quickly piled up before me. Even though I knew that there were still some loose ends in what I had I felt that God was saying that this was enough for today and so I packed up. Before leaving the church I got a bucket of water and cleaned some ketchup off the side door of the church (it had dried and so took more effort than I anticipated).
I got home just before Ruth so that I could prepare tea.
It was a fantastic day; I ended it more relaxed than when I started it!

We have just spent 9 days together with Jesus reflecting on some solid teaching. My head is reeling, I don’t know about you. But he is a tender revolutionary and will not put us through more than we can bear.
Keeping company with Jesus does not weigh us down, it lifts us up, it freshens us up. It reminds us how to enjoy life again.