“ON RECREATION”
“Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my failures. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.”
– Psalm 51:8-12
Where I grew up in NE Ohio… summer began on Memorial Day. School was out. Public pools and parks were open to all. Vacations were being planned… children played in the yards and open fields from dawn to dusk and it lasted all the way to Labor Day… when the schools re-opened on the Wednesday following that national holiday. Short and sweet when I was a kid… it seemed to last forever… as it was the season we all looked forward to… much different from the seasons in Texas where there is summer and the other summer…
And now the hot summer is here… almost… June to July to August! How will you use the time? What are your plans? Are you up for something new?
Something memorable? Or are you at a place in life where you look forward to some faithful routine that takes you from one summer to the next?
Something perhaps you’d really miss if it were discontinued… like an annual fishing trip or family reunion or a church convention… and yes… even a church convention can provide some ‘re-creation’ as these are all ‘God-things’… needed things… reflecting the design and desire of God the Creator who according to the story when finished putting the universe in place… took time off to rest… and I like the idea Jesus paused often to be alone to refresh and reboot and was even known to take a nap on the boat while being rowed across the Sea of Galilee… Faith matters. Recreation is required!
Did you catch the words of the Psalmist? “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice” and the need to have God create a new heart in us? To renew our spirit? God does love us so and these words are a gentle pat on our faces and then deep in our hearts and minds to remember God really wants the very best for us and is willing to provide the needed recreation any one of us requires.
Life is hard.
Our bones get crushed.
Our spirits are diminished from the demands of others and the desires we ourselves create … those lofty life goals we believe we must achieve only to find out later on… hardly anybody cared and we’d only leave our trophies and bank accounts for someone else to tend to.
I’ve come to a place in life being grateful for the seasons of time and the seasons of life…as well as the rhythm of time and the rhythms of life. They are cousins but not the same as I can stroll through my memories the things I have accomplished as well as the images of adventure and moments of relaxation used to restore my own body, mind and spirit for all the things I did and all the things I think I have left to see and do. “Life’s short. Don’t blink,” they told us… then we lived… and we blinked… and they were right… life’s short… and it’s hard and we need a dose of God’s time-out to get us from one moment to the next!
We can get confused if we’re not care-full. We have a rhythm of life… 60 minutes in an hour… 24 hours in a day… 7 days in a week… and 52 weeks in a year…where we devote that time and our energy to work, and worship and play… carved out mostly in eight hour blocks… including the rest we receive at night… and sometime we get confused and out of sync when we worship our work… work at our play and then what’s left is to play at our worship… or worse have no worship at all… and yet the promise comes when we take time to rest entering into a holy recreation… as the joy of our salvation is restored… renewing our lives… always!
The Rev. Dr. Brian K. Gigee is a long-time resident of Pearland, having pastored four churches over the last four decades in Texas and Louisiana. Read more following Brian’s blog ‘murmurings’ at https://briangigee.wordpress.com/. Send comments and/or questions to godworks247365@gmail.com.
