Tag Archives: relationship

Jesus work, fabulous luxury

Doing Jesus’ work through fabulous luxury

Have you heard the saying, “Preach the gospel at all times; use words when necessary”? My pastor recently spoke about that. It used to be one of his favorites, he said, but not anymore; instead, he urged us to talk about Jesus, “no matter how uncomfortable it is.”

I was thinking about that this week as I took vacation time with my wife and daughter and some dear family friends. Some see vacation time as a fabulous luxury, but despite what my pastor said, I think we were doing at least three things that express God’s design for us— building relationship, creating sabbath, using our treasure— quite apart from the need for words.

Building relationship

Recently I have realized that vacation is not “one thing”, and how people like to enjoy themselves varies widely. For example, when my 70-something parents vacation, they like to go someplace new and exotic, and suck all the marrow out of life; where they get their energy from, I have no idea. When my sister’s family vacations, they like to go to an event, like a puzzle competition or a bluegrass festival. Whereas for our family, vacation is all about the “who”, more so than the “where” or the “what”. We like to “stay-cation” at a beautiful spot about 40 minutes’ drive from home, and the whole time is spent entertaining friends and family who drive up to visit us there. We swim, we cook out, and we celebrate time together.

Is it holy? Are we doing ministry? As I reflect on it, the answer, I think, is very much of a yes, even though most of the time, nobody is talking about Jesus. In Matthew 25, Jesus says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father… for I was a stranger and you invited me in.” I have written before about the deep craving for relationship that is ingrained into each of us. Meeting this need for others, Christ says, is on a par with life essentials like food and water.

Creating sabbath

Our society is stressed out. A 2013 study by the American Psychological Association says that we are “a picture of high stress and ineffective coping mechanisms that appear to be ingrained in our culture”. Stress, the study says, impacts both our physical and mental health:

  • resulting in high rates of anger, irritability and anxiety
  • contributing to ailments ranging from digestive upset to heart disease
  • compounding depression and obesity

We see the examples everywhere. The Onion just satirized it with an article entitled, “Father Teaches Son How To Fly Into Rage Over Completely Inconsequential B*******”. This week when a friend’s dog escaped and ran into the street, rather than help, a nearby stranger began screaming unprovoked invective at her, moving her to tears. She was able to offer grace to her tormentor, concluding “Be kind. Everyone is doing the best they can. I know that angry man has some battles of his own.” But none of this is what God intended for us. Part of the reason we have so little patience for each other is that we do not honor our God-given rhythms of work and rest. Ann Graham Lotz went on record this week blaming the decline of American society on all the usual suspects, but nowhere does she mention our wholesale abandonment of the sabbath. Yet the biblical commandment to honor the sabbath and keep it holy is no less strongly worded, and the consequences are far more obvious and direct.

Into the midst of this kind of world, I believe, nothing is more important than creating margin for downtime. We relax, we renew, we replenish. We invest in our marriages and our children. Again, I think it is work God would approve of.

Using our treasure

There has been a lot of talk in the U.S. in recent years about “the 1%”, by which we mean the super-wealthy ivory-tower elite. But in a global sense, I am actually part of that top 1%, and so, quite likely, are you. (Find out here.) We have a lot to share, and God commands that we do so; otherwise we are like Jesus’ parables about the rich man (“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God”) or the unworthy servant (“So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground”).

We have nice things. We like to share them. We get to vacation in a beautiful place. Why should we keep that experience to ourselves? Once, a friend’s father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and his kids pulled together to raise money and send their parents on the honeymoon they’d never had. We helped. Sometimes we are hosts on Airbnb, and have the privilege of helping to make that “pause from the action” happen in the lives of people we didn’t even know before. I think all of this is work that is pleasing to God, absence of a come-to-Jesus talk notwithstanding. Speaking of which…

About Jesus: uncomfortable?

When my wife was involved in Young Life, one of their core principles was “earning the right to be heard,” meaning that your advice to others is fairly meaningless and hollow if you won’t take the trouble to invest and walk alongside. The class Perspectives on the World Christian Movement makes the same point in the context of global missions. The gospel message is good news of freedom and reunion and redemption, soaked in a tonic of self-sacrificing love. It is hard to see how we have worked ourselves up into a state where talking about that should be seen as an uncomfortable chore. Jesus’ conversations about himself and the kingdom of heaven were a lot of things— transformative, miraculous, polarizing— but they were never simply socially awkward.

When our focus is on building relationship and investing in others in love, conversations happen naturally about who we are, how we live, what we believe and why. And that, after all, is what Christian faith is fundamentally about.

Related links

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