Christmas cheer put to one side – I’m tired, really tired. I need a sabbath – not just a quick one but a long one – a mind, body and soul one. I can choose to do that in the joy of Christmas – but I don’t want to enter this ‘Christmas sabbath’ with naive frivolity, I want to enter it with authenticity of where I’m at.
The great reset of 2020 – did anyone else actually miss the pause button everyone is talking about? Did anyone else realise that the last 12 months have disappeared into an abyss? And while everyone else supposedly has found some sort of heightened self-realisation and hit re-set mode, do you like me feel you’ve been in a trench filling with water and you can’t seem to quite dig yourself out? And truthfully you haven’t even processed the year because you haven’t had time and you’ve just been surviving?
That aside though…I’ve been thinking, maybe just maybe, what 2020 did was just show us how we have been living for years and years? 2020 was just the pinnacle point before we collapse! 2020 is actually the turning point for us, a moment of choice on how you and I are going to journey forward.
We are weary, and I want to declare today permission to be weary.
Have you aches and pains in your body, is your mental capacity stretched to far – you’re thinking, and processing less sharp. Has your body been shouting for a while now – rest!
Are you less tolerant of others – you don’t seem to have the capacity to take any more. Your inner reserves are depleted. And your soul – well, it’s masked with religion; ‘your mask is in your bible’. We know the answers – the right ones – we know how it should be –we write about the stuff, speak about the stuff but it’s only a mask, we are not a living reality.
The answer to all of this? It is in the invitation of 2020 – to rest and let Jesus change us.
In Luke 13 on the sabbath day Jesus sees a woman crippled by an evil spirit, for 18 years. Eighteen years of living crippled, surviving, unable to stand straight.
Are we at a similar place at the end of 2020 – surviving, unable to stand up straight? Has 2020 highlighted years of striving, imbalance, have we in fact been wearing invisible masks for years hiding our loneliness, seeking acceptance and belonging, proving ourselves with our busyness and for years we’ve been crippled, burning out.
Did 2020 just bring us to our knees? Has it brought us to a sabbath moment were God desires to restore our souls?
Interesting isn’t it that on a Sabbath – a day of rest Jesus touches the woman crippled for 18 years. Jesus restores her, heals her completely.
So, as you head into Christmas and 2021, are you going to join me and choose it as a sabbath and be touched by Jesus. May it be a place to be led by Jesus and made to rest; made to be still and allow Him to restore your soul.