Friday, September 9, 2011

self-inflicted wounds

I saw a t-shirt today for a construction company that said, “If you’re not bleeding you’re not working.”

A lot of us are bleeding. We’re wounded by past experiences and hurts from others. Why would we want to add self-inflicted wounds to the injuries from which we need healing?

We assume that God wants us to be productive and that the only way to know how productive we are is for us to feel some pain. So if someone seems too relaxed (including ourselves) we wonder if they’re working hard enough. We look for evidence of commitment to God that includes an overloaded calendar and a vaguely harried manner. If I lash out at someone in anger, I feel justified when I think, “If s/he only knew how much pressure I’m under.”

And then I read Isaiah 30:15: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength”. The Martha in me protests, but God has a rebuttal, “but you would have none of it.” Yeah, he's talking to me.

Can God really get his work done while I am resting in him? Do I have time to respond to Jesus’ call, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28)? Someone once said to me that God has given me all the time I need to do what he is calling me to do. The problem is that I keep adding other stuff to my calendar. What I really need to do is stop and talk to God and discern what he really wants me to do.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t a cross for me to bear, that I am to share in the sufferings of Jesus. But there’s a difference between wounds that come from taking up the cross and self-inflicted wounds from carrying too heavy a calendar.