Newsletter – Summer at SCC

Tom & Micah at Lake Lansing

Is your summer jam packed like mine?  I’m looking at my calendar and between conferences, retreats, meetings, and vacation, I’m going to be traveling a lot of miles this summer.  How am I going to fit everything in that I want to do?  And keep up my regular commitments?  Not to mention the new six-month-old in my house.  Yikes!  I love summer, but…

When things get busy it’s tempting to throw out two practices that nurture my soul amidst the hectic pace of our culture these days: Sabbath rest and community worship.  These two practices will help you not just survive your summer schedule, but have the presence of mind and fullness of spirit to experience God at work amidst it all.

Sabbath

What is “Sabbath”?  Sabbath is the seventh day of creation.  It is the day when God had finished creating and took time to enjoy it all by resting (Genesis 2:1-3).  It is interesting to note that the Bible literally says that God “finished” creation on the seventh day.  Work isn’t finished until it includes rest.  It strikes me that when we don’t take a day to rest and reflect, what we’re really claiming is that we’re better than God.  God may have needed a day of rest, but we don’t.

It’s easy to get caught up in debating what day should be the Sabbath or what you can and can’t do on the Sabbath and end up missing Sabbath.  Don’t let that happen this summer.  Take a day each week to rest.  Otherwise all the taxiing of kids here and there, family BBQs, vacations, days at the beach, gardening, exercising, and more will fly by, and you will have missed God’s presence the rest of the time.

Community Worship

What is community worship?  Community worship is when we gather to encounter God and respond with everything we’ve got.  Worship attunes our hearts, minds, bodies, spirits, and souls (every part of us!) to God.  Worship and Sabbath are closely related.  They go together like burgers and brats.  Like sand and water.  Like sun and sunscreen.  One way we rest is by taking time to worship God.

It’s so easy in the summer to wake up and see that’s it’s a beautiful day and skip taking time to join other Christians for worship.  It’s so easy to be on vacation camping or at the family cabin and decide to sleep in rather than worship in community.  It’s so easy to think of worship like we grew up thinking about school, the summers are off.

Commit

Will you commit to staying connected to God through community worship this summer?  If you’re on vacation, find a church to visit (it’s always a good experience to remember anew what it’s like to be a visitor at church).  If you’re feeling like you’d rather sleep in, remember the other times you didn’t want to go to church and when you did, you were glad because God showed up in your life.  If you’re too busy because you’re running your life ragged, maybe it’s time to rethink your time commitments to include rest and community worship.

When we take time to practice Sabbath and community worship, time is transformed and God’s purposes play out in our lives.  Now that’s something I don’t want to miss this summer!

Peace,
Tom