Hecticallity

In the real world, when people say, “How are you doing?” you simply reply, “I’m good thanks”. In Cambridge, you say, “Yeah good thanks… busy.”

Last week I was busy. I was directing a play and the performances were last weekend, and I had also ended up running a 24 hour prayer event which actually ended up being 38 hours. And I also had a bunch of people who I care about who I needed to spend time with. And an English degree to be getting on with. What’s funny is that I told you that partly because I’m proud of it, because a part of me thinks it’s cool to be busy. I’m in demand. I’m dynamic. Shut up Mike.

Now all the things I did last week were good things (as in the play and the event and stuff, not every single thing I actually did, many of them were not good, obviously…) but there was just too much of them. The word is hectic. Life was hectic. Even though everything fitted into my Google Calendar alright it didn’t quite fit into my head. I was waking up tired, and going to bed stressed. I kept saying that everything was under control but if we’re honest no one was convinced.

And as far as I can tell, that’s a pretty common feeling in this uni, in the western world really. Running on empty and on energy drinks. And it’s like when we get like this for a long time, when we’re fighting to keep all this stuff under control we start to lose control of ourselves a little bit. I remember the day we climbed to the top of Mount Mulanje, coming down, gradually getting more and more exhausted and losing the will to control my legs, and just going faster and faster down this slope until I was almost running. And it was stupid, and I slowed myself down, or I tried to, but my legs were just so tired they were going wild. And I think it feels like that sometimes with our whole lives – it did for me at times last week.

It’s not that fun, all this hecticallity. So what’s the answer? What is it that our aching bones and brains are begging us for?

To rest, maybe. It seems a little obvious. To be restored. To be renewed, to be refreshed. I love the word ‘refreshed’, I love the shape of it in your mouth.

But how? How to be refreshed? Sometimes we just need to sleep. Fairly early on this term I wrote down some of Psalm 127 and pinned it to my wall: it has this great bit that basically says, “Relax. Whatever you’re trying to do, if God’s up for it, it’ll work, and if he’s not it won’t, in the mean time, get some sleep.” And there’s a tiredness that really just needs to stop and sleep, and let our bodies do some restoration work on themselves.

But then there’s another type of rest. A rest that’s worth getting up at 3am for. All week I’ve been enjoying people’s astonishment at the fact that real people actually chose to wake up and go and pray in our prayer room between 3 and 4 in the morning. And it does seem ridiculous, in the 7^th week of an insanely intensive 8 week academic term, for these sleep deprived people to willingly deprive themselves of more to go and sit in a room and talk to God. It seems ridiculous unless you’ve ever felt the rest that’s better than sleep.

One of the things that Jesus said that I always come back to and has a tendency to melt some bit of my insides whenever I do is this: (a ‘yoke’ by the way is the wooden thing that attaches cattle to a cart or a plough, it’s the thing that ties you to the guy you’re working for…)

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

And then the same idea again in the most beautiful words is written down in John’s gospel, in chapter 7:

            “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me… rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

I’m writing this at half past midnight, and my eyelids are feeling pretty heavy. But I feel refreshed. I feel refreshed because tonight I went for a drink with a guy I’ve got to know recently and said he’d read my blog and was keen to chat about God. I went there keen to help him to get to know God better, to encourage him to discover Jesus. And then I turned up, and as He so often does and I so rarely admit, God had done the job without me. He told me his story, about how in the last year God basically planted this unshakeable desire in him for something bigger than his normal life of friends and having a good time, and somehow showed him this new way that he was being looked at, that his name was being spoken by something bigger than another person, and that he was being embraced by something huge and beautiful. And he knows Jesus, and he’s now finding himself with this longing to give the joy that he has found to the people that he loves. And I don’t think I stopped smiling for about two hours.

And my friends that prayed for an hour in the thing last week all told me it was brilliant. All told me that they loved it. And when I stop and think about it that is crazy. But being with God, fixing our gaze on who he is and what he’s done, is impossibly refreshing. When we drink deep, we find a river of life welling up within us.

I’m going to stop writing now, partly because sleep is good, and partly because really this rest is pretty impossible to describe. It’s like fresh mango on a hot day. All I can really do is tell you how beautiful it is, and ask you to try it. Drink deep, and sleep well everyone. Goodnight.