The Rhythm of Life
Photo by Matt Barrett on Unsplash
Friends, I have a confession. This blog is late. In fact it’s 2 weeks late. This makes no difference to you but the irony is not lost on me considering this is supposed to be the first post in a series of posts about the rhythms of life around which Christians orient themselves.
Lately my rhythms have been a little hectic.
The rhythms and rituals of Levitical law shaped the Hebrew people into God’s people. Through disciplined practice and obedience they went from being a people with different familial backgrounds and experiences to being God’s own people. Don’t be mistaken this wasn’t the result of meaningless, rote habits. It was the fruit of a relational rule of life that communicated God’s desires and intentions for his creation to be consecrated and unified to him, and in him. Each feast, each ritual, each sacrifice was imbued with meaning that shaped the way the Hebrews thought about and understood God, and the world around them.
The same is true for us today. The body of Christ is a living organism full of beauty, and diversity of faith expression, and yet we are one body. Our points of unification are still our rituals, our creeds, our worldview, and of course– our King. Consider that for over 2000 years people who profess faith in the risen Christ have gathered to worship him. Christians from every historic epoch, everywhere in the known world, and in almost every language have said the same prayers, celebrated the same holy days, and found hope in the same ancient sacred texts!
It’s tempting to let any number of things dictate the rhythm of our existence: work, family, sports, personal preferences, hobbies, you name it, and we can probably find a justification for it’s place in our schedule. Human beings know how to fill time, and further more we’re exceedingly good at convincing ourselves that our full schedules are a sign our purpose and meaning in the world.
In the opening chapter of Genesis the Lord orders his creation. On the 4th day of creation the Lord sets the stars in the sky, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years,’” Here the Lord is doing more than just setting the rhythms and patterns of movements within the night sky to mark the passage of time. In this moment God makes the passage of time itself— sacred. He ends the 4th day with his joyous refrain; he saw that “it was good.” What God makes good is a gift to human beings. What God gives to human beings is meant to draw them closer to himself. What we order our days around is of profound importance; and what we order our time around tells us if we have truly given ourselves to God. Time is a gift. When we surrender all of our time to the Lord, he will sanctify it, and us by ordering us around that to which he calls us.
Over the next few weeks we will explore the things God gave us to fill our time and by which we can order our lives around him. We pray you’ll join us.