In Rhythm with God, Life, and Love

Continuing with my thoughts about living from the center of things, I want to unpack the following statements:

I want to live from the center of things.

I want to breath free and easy without fear and constricted stress.

I want to be paced and in rhythm with God, life, and love.

A friend of mine, Brandon Brown, helped me think through the idea that life is rhythmic. We were in the midst of considering some of our ministry values across youth and young adult ministry when Brandon urged the group of us to consider rhythmic as one of our values.

He stated it like this:

God has created the universe with certain rhythms built in. Season, tides, lunar cycles, life stage, and Sabbath are all examples of such rhythms. These rhythms are important and should be carefully observed in our lives and in our ministry life.

I’ve come to think that Brandon is right. Life is ordered around rhythms. Life is structured around the changes of seasons, the shifts of age, the undulations of days, weeks, months and years. “And there was evening and there was morning” linked with “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work” was the rhythm of creation for God.

We live immersed in these rhythms, yet so often fight against them. When night comes, we turn on our lights, turn up the music, down gallons of caffeine, and push through our normal weariness to the rising of the sun. When day arrives with the rising sun, we put the pillow over our heads, pull down the black-out shades, and try to sleep just a bit longer.

What if we tried to slow down and live within the rhythms instead of fighting them?

What if we recognized the rhythm of day and night and lived within it?

What if we affirmed the rhythm of a week – 6 days to work and 1 to cease – and lived within it?

What if we began to enjoy the seasons of a year – their graces and limitations – and lived within them?

What if we identified the shifts in our lives over years and decades and began to make space for the implications of those shifts within our ways of living?

Might our lives not be less harried and more restful; less strained and more free; less frustrated and more loving; less distracted and more centered?

I want to live from the center of things.

I want to breath free and easy without fear and constricted stress.

I want to be paced and in rhythm with God, life, and love.