Devotional Thought of the Day:

While you are prisoners in foreign lands, your own land will enjoy years of rest and refreshment, as it should have done each seventh year when you lived there. 7 In the land of your enemies, you will tremble at the rustle of a leaf, as though it were a sword. And you will become so weak that you will stumble and fall over each other, even when no one is chasing you.  Leviticus 26:34-37  CEV

684    So your talents, your personality, your qualities are being wasted. So you’re not allowed to take full advantage of them. Meditate well on these words of a spiritual writer: “The incense offered to God is not wasted. Our Lord is more honored by the immolation of your talents than by their vain use.”

We live in a culture that adores action, even as it hates inaction. Ambition is a virtue in today’s culture, and someone content with where they are at in life is odd and perhaps more than a bit eccentric.

Those who aren’t always moving, working their plan, aren’t considered lazy, or lacking motivation and drive. Everything in our society must be put to use profitably.  We’ve made time an idol to serve, a god that demands all that we have, and more.

In the Old Testament, there were times of rest – Sabbaths.  Weekly, monthly and even every 7 years, everything was supposed to rest, finding what it needed, not from work, but from the hand of God. In fact, part of the punishment for Israel’s sin in the captivity was due to not hearing God’s call to stop, to rest, and let the land find its rest. So during the captivity, God provided for the land what we did not.  A time of rest, a time to recover, a time to let God provide.

I think this is St. Josemaria’s point in the quote from “The Way” I read this morning.  I didn’t like it at first, for I understand the feeling that comes from inaction.  I may have gotten past the idea of leaving food on my table as wasting it, but I can’t abide “wasting time” or even worse, not being able to use what God has gifted me with to help or disciple others.

Yet there are times to rest or to use Biblical/Agricultural terms, to lay fallow.  To get past the guilty feeling, to simply leave it in God’s more than capable hands.  Offer the stillness, the inactivity to Him.  Indeed, to spend that time with Him. No agenda, no purpose, simply enjoying His presence.

A time where we don’t notice the passing of time. We just are there, in the moment, with Jesus.

The challenge is desiring this time, looking forward to it, not feeling guilty, but realizing it is time God would have us set aside, with Him. Yet that is the reward…time, with Him… communion with God, and the peace we need, in our lives.

Take the time, waste it in the world’s view, but take it and please God with offering it to Him.

Lord, help us realize the need to find rest in you, not just when we are exhausted and overwhelmed.  Help us to not get to the point where like the Israelites, You have to take us captive, to get our lives and homes to rest, and the peace be restored. 

Escriva, Josemaria. The Way . Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.