The wood piece on our cabin wall spoke to me tonight, begging both to be seen through the eye of my camera and inscribed on my mind and heart. There is indeed a season for everything, and now for my wife and me it is time away. Not away from life, for where can one go away from that anymore than one can go away from God (Psalm 139)? Time away ought rather to be seen as time to renew one’s life, i.e. to step forward into reflection and rest even while stepping back awhile from routines and schedules. The latter, if never left, can bind—even harden—one’s spirit and choke not only one’s creative energy but his or her vitality as well.The art piece is instructive. Get outside yourself, your study and home and let the rays of the sun permeate your being. Look at the birds of the air that neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. And consider the lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin, yet even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. And do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today (Matthew 6:25-34). Take time away!
I live too much in chronos, clock time, chronologically So do you. Take time away to seek kairos, purposeful time--the perspective we all need to live closer to God and his will. One needn’t leave home to take time away, but it helps. Thoreau found time in the solitude of his home by Walden Pond. What matters is allowing some space and time to see yourself in larger perspective—to get beyond what you have achieved and experienced and thus begin to grasp life’s fuller dimensions. An anthem we once sang in the North Park (Chicago) Church choir when I was a teenager addresses the challenge, which always begins with inner yearning:
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
while the swift seasons roll.
Leave thy low-vaulted past.
Let each new temple nobler than the last
get thee to heav’n with a dome more vast
till thou at length art free,
leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.
Day two away for us has been a good day. May its blessings increase until it is time again to return, as we must--yet different, deeper and richer, as we long to be.
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