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Rev. LaTrell Harrison | ACM Search and Call, and Congregational Care
On Sunday, November 1, most of us will set our clocks back one hour and receive what morning people everywhere celebrate as an “extra hour.” I have been thinking about that hour.
Actually, I have been thinking about how tired so many of us are. As I travel among our congregations, I keep meeting faithful people who are running on empty: lay leaders who have stepped into roles they never imagined, committee members who have read
the same budget three times, hoping it will read differently, pastors carrying congregations through transitions, and members quietly grieving what their church once was while working hard to preserve what remains. Weariness, I have learned, is one of the most honest things a congregation can say out loud — and one of the rarest.
So, when the clocks fall back, I want to suggest that we do something more radical than simply enjoy a longer morning. I want to suggest that we fall back — deliberately — into the rest of God.
The lie of the full calendar
We are a people who have learned to measure faithfulness by activity. If the calendar is
full, the ministry must be healthy. If the building is busy, God must be pleased. Somewhere along the way, many of our congregations absorbed the culture’s creed that our worth is our productivity — and we baptized it.
But Scripture keeps insisting on a different rhythm. In the creation story, God rests —
not because God was tired, but because rest is holy. In the wilderness, God commands
Israel to stop gathering manna one day out of seven, even though the people were
hungry and the food lay right on the ground. The Sabbath command was not a reward
for finishing the work. It was a practice of trust, written into the body: you are not the
one holding up the world.
There is a reason the manna story comes right after... Click Here to Read the Full Article
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