Resting and Resetting

Today, according to the calendar established in the Old Testament, was the Day of Atonement, one of the high holidays of the Jewish year. For us Christ-followers, this is something we celebrate everyday -- that He came to be our atonement. And all those years ago, when God first instituted this special Feast day, I imagine it was one of His favorite days -- knowing the End of the Story.

In my opinion, if one wanted to choose to observe any of the Old Testament feasts, this would be the month to do so. (When I announced last week that we were going to participate in the Feast of Trumpets, Strider's first question, asked with a scowl, was, "Are we going to have to eat some gross foods or something?" The answer was NO! This has nothing to do with food.) This month has 3 of the big OT feasts, and for each of them, there are specific commands about either A.) PARTYING or B.) REST. Definitely a good month to be an Old Testament Jew.

Much as I like a good party, at this stage of life, the concept of REST has the most appeal. I counted up how many days God set apart this month by saying that people should do no work, and there were 4 altogether. Adding in the month's regular Sabbath days, and you get probably 8 different REST days in the month! All forced holiday -- no guilt involved.

I think God knows we are easily distractable, easily deceived and forgetful people, and we need special times to stop, listen and RESET. For the last several years I've found the time of Lent to be good opportunity to practice some disciplines and habits I don't usually have the rest of the year. But then, a few months later, I've all but completely forgotten the lessons from that period. Then this year I learned about the Days of Awe and was able to practice awe and repentance again. Some things have come into greater focus for me... but I'm sure I'll begin to forget and fall back into old habits soon. I think God knew this about my character, and His plan for setting aside certain days as holidays, or "holy days," (literally, days set apart), is helpful for realigning, and resetting.

One of the things I've tried to do this last week was to purposely choose each day at some point to be quiet, when I otherwise would not be. Whether it meant not turning on the TV while I was feeding Miles, or not turning on the radio as soon as I got in the car, or not getting on the phone when I was washing dishes, I spent at least a few extra minutes a day just trying to be quiet. This was big for me (I love INPUT). And in those few minutes, I was able to consciously choose to RESET all over again.

I have to say, my schedule did not alter greatly - -this is still a crazy-busy time of year for us with Pete working 10-12 hour days a lot of the time. And the kids did not choose to practice greater amounts of quiet time, as I would have liked. But I'm happy to get small glimpses of calm in the midst of the howling winds anyway!