Being nourished by doing God's will

In today's Magnificat morning prayers, there is a passage from Psalm 119:17-24 which speaks of the psalmist's desire to know God's commands and to do God's will. The preface for this passage introduces this reading with another brief passage from John 4, which is part of the story of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well:

Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has any one brought him food?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work...."

That got me thinking about the difference between the way Jesus experienced doing his Father's will, and our own experience, which often is much less enthusiastic about doing the Father's will. For some reason, I then thought of a very interesting comment that I heard many years ago in a talk by, I believe, Ralph Martin. In this talk, the speaker was recounting his experience in learning to ski. He had basically taught himself to ski, but then later in life had the opportunity to get a lesson from a genuine skiing instructor. He was amazed at how difficult this was. The problem was that he had taught himself a number of incorrect techniques, which were quite limited in what they could accomplish. If he wanted to learn the right way to do those things (such as the proper way to turn), then he had to un-learn all of the bad techniques, and replace them with mastery of good techniques. He was also amazed at what a difference learning the proper way to ski made, and how much easier it was to ski faster and more flexibly.

What I heard the Lord say at this point is that our response to doing the Father's will is much like that. Growing up in a broken, fallen world, learning from broken, fallen parents and other teachers, we have learned to do a lot of things, but we have learned bad ways of doing them, based on fear and selfish impulses. Because of that, when we finally hear what the Father's will is, it seems painful and hard, and counter to what we naturally want to do. But if we had learned from the beginning the proper way to respond, then we too would experience doing God's will as being nourishing and energizing. 

May we all come to experience what Jesus did, that our food is to do the will of Him who sent us, and to accomplish His work! And may the Father give us the courage to unlearn the old ways we have of living, and learn the new ways that Jesus came to teach us.

On Rest, Refreshment, and Recreation

This weekend I am focusing on getting the rest and refreshment that everyone needs, but which I find difficult to manage. I have to work really hard to rest and refresh myself. I wrote about this recently in a private posting, when I said:

We have been reading another book about "discipleship", i.e., about being a better disciple and helping others do the same. One of the topics that rang very true for us was the idea "work out of your rest -- don't rest out of your work". In other words, rest is not the antidote for work, but rather, work is the fruit of adequate rest. If you are not truly rested, you cannot do good work.

This morning I was listening to a podcast by Taylor Marshall, another Catholic scholar and writer to whom I have been listening a lot. In the podcast, Marshall touched on the importance of 'recreation', which of course comes from the Latin recreatus, literally, being re-created, a word that is normally used in the sense of being 'restored' or 'revived'. Marshall also quoted a proverb from Sirach:

Do not deprive yourself of a happy day;let not your share of desired good pass by you.--Sirach 14:14

This command (and it is a command!) struck me as something aimed squarely at me. Marshall went on to talk about the vital importance of finding time regularly to lay aside work, and turn our hearts to the things that can strengthen and refresh us: God, of course, but also family and friends, as well as activities and things which we take pleasure in.

I find this work/rest balance very challenging. My entire psychology has been based on doing, on accomplishment, on ticking off tasks from a list. I have never been good at taking time with family and friends for the sake of refreshing myself. Whenever I do take that time with others, I often manage to turn it into a duty, and I completely miss the fact that this is what I am doing. Moreover, I miss the benefit that taking this time should provide to me. However, it is exceptionally easy for me to see others making this same mistake, and for me to pontificate on these other people's need to recreate and spend time with family and friends. This of course is a classic case of a guy with a log in his eye trying to remove bits of dust from the eyes of others. As Mary and I learn more about what discipleship in Christ really entails, the more convinced I am about the importance of all of these little aspects of discipleship (such as proper rest and recreation) that I have previously dismissed as of secondary importance. Despite my evident hypocrisy in saying this, let me strongly urge all of my readers: Allow yourself time for recreation, for enjoying activities that you delight in.

It seems to me that sports-lovers have a kind of advantage in this regard. In our Western culture, there are many well-developed patterns for how people can engage with sports, both to participate in them and to watch them. Unfortunately, I never allowed myself the opportunity to enjoy sports. I think that this is in part because I always did so poorly at sports when I was young, and more recently because I am afraid of wasting time. The value of sharing an enjoyable experience with others never really crossed my mind until very recently.

As it happens, as I write this the annual big football contest between UM and MSU is underway in East Lansing. I am not in a position to watch this game today, but now that I am thinking about recreation as a shared experience, I am experiencing a bit of regret about missing the game.

BTW, there was a funny thing related to the UM/MSU game at work yesterday. We have about 20 software developers there in our building, including both UM and MSU graduates. An important part of our software development process is a huge suite of automatic tests that get run daily. We also have these two giant TV screens set up in a prominent place in the office, which continuously display a graphical representation of the status of these tests. If a test fails (usually because one of the developers made a mistake in their recent changes) then the box representing that test changes from green to red. Yesterday I noticed that the color scheme had changed for these test displays. One of the displays showed the test boxes as white text on a green background (for MSU) and the other showed maize text on a blue background (for UM). On a related note, I have several kids and a son-in-law who went to MSU, and several kids (plus the same son-in-law) who also went to UM. So any sports contest between the two schools inevitably results in a good deal of trash talk between the two groups.

Anyway: rest, recreation, refreshment - these are not optional for Christians. Our Lord commands them in several ways for our own good. I want to do better at understanding these activities, at making proper use of them in my life, and at encouraging the same in the lives of people I am close to.