There is something reassuring sometimes about not using your brain.  Letting yourself drift into a stupor where the expectations are low and the drive is even lower.  I love days like that, days where I putter through my time doing those tasks that require very little of me and letting my mind wander (or not).  We all need a break sometimes.  Time to give ourselves over to mindless tasks, which can be fulfilling in itself.  Days like that are important for our peace of mind and our sanity.  Time to just drift….

Yes, all very nice and peaceful.  Just drifting along.  But what happens when that day of drifting turns into another day, a week, a month?  It can be easy to slip into a routine where the expectations upon you are low and the energy and motivation is even lower.   This can happen no matter where you are.  I personally have found this in two very different stages of my life.  The first stage is the more recent of the two.  Staying at home with kids is an intense job in itself.  It has its ups and downs but can settle into a rhythm of day-to-day, like to like, same ol’ same old.  I also found this when I was in Seminary.  I learned so much but my growth and knowledge of God happened so much in my head that there would be days, even weeks going by where I realized that my head was absorbing these truths about God but my heart was not.

Now, you may ask, what has inspired this period of murky self-reflection?  This remembering of days where part of me was going through the motions in a semi-trance without intentional thought or consideration?  Strangely enough, it’s this next verse in Proverbs 31 that has brought this about.

Proverbs 31:24 She makes linen garments and sells them,
and supplies the merchants with sashes. (NIV)

It’s strange, I know, to make this kind of connection between a state of semi-stupor to this woman’s success and business savvy.  But as I read this verse it struck me and touched upon what is quickly becoming a bandbox for me.  I look at this verse that shows the business this woman has set up for herself.  She is industrious, savvy, and smart.  She is a woman who has extended herself beyond what is expected of her in her culture.  From what we know of her so far, we see a woman who is in comfortable circumstances.  Her family wants for nothing.  Her husband is respected and her children are healthy and well cared for.  She even has servants to help her so we can assume a relative level of economic comfort.  It may be that her business was part of what got her family there but once the success was reached, she could have scaled back, rested on her laurels.  I’m sure that her husband, a well-respected man, is able to provide for her.  She could have stayed home, puttering around, being a lady who lunched.  It would have been easy to do.

She doesn’t do that, though, does she?  Amidst the other things that she does, she extends herself in yet another direction.  I’m not advocating that we do everything she does in order to feel that we are serving God well.  I don’t think that’s the point of this passage.  What is this passage telling me about being a woman who fears the Lord?  I’m not likely to be a linen merchant and my sash making ability is, I’m sure, average at best.  So what am I to take from this?  Here is where the bandbox comes in.

We expect to little of ourselves.

I have settled in the past.  Settled for going through the motions, thinking that maintaining the status quo was enough.  “I’m doing the best I can for right now” turns into “I’m doing a little bit but not much” for a long time.  I go through the motions of my day, go through the motions of work, of ministry, of spiritual life doing just enough and just fine.  But it’s not.  How would it change if we could see beyond our everyday to see our potential through God’s eyes?  What if I transformed my mind, determined to sharpen it, use it for God’s glory?  How would this change my life and ministry?

It’s like exercise.  If you don’t move your body and use it you get stiff and lose energy.  You start to think that where you are is good enough and don’t realize the energy and health you could feel if you dreamed bigger and thought further.  What if we applied that to our relationship with God and our ministries?  Is there that book in the Bible that I’ve avoided (Leviticus, anyone?) because I thought I wasn’t smart enough to understand it, it’s boring, it has nothing that applies to me today.  What if I decided that God must have put it there for a reason so I should stretch myself that extra inch, mile?  Maybe you look start reading that book and start drawing images that you see as you read.  Maybe you write it out in your own words.  Maybe you put yourself in the shoes of that person living at that time and imagine what this would mean to them in their life.  Maybe there’s that person at church who seems to really get the Bible.  What would happen if you actually started a conversation with them about it?  What if you read a verse and you posted it on Facebook asking for other people’s thoughts about it?  You’d get some pretty cool answers, I bet.  And what an opportunity to talk to some of your non-Churched friends about it. (there’s another way to stretch yourself, too.  Look how it snowballs)

I so firmly believe that God wants to draw us deeper and higher to unimaginable heights in our lives of service to him.  When you go to church, how much imagination do you use in your ministry?  Do you do what you’ve always done and kept your head down or is there this niggling idea at the back of your brain that’s telling you that x, y, or z would be a good idea?  Is there a ministry idea, a need to be met, that you’ve always thought about but never followed through on?  It’s so easy to just slip into a ministry and coast along doing a good job but not extend yourself.  Can you honestly say that you are feeding a large amount of drive, passion, and imagination to your ministry?  We are all gifted by God to serve him.  If your gift is Service how are you extending yourself, stretching yourself?  Is there a need you see that isn’t being met in your church or community?  If you are gifted to teach are you teaching to the best of your ability?  Are you seeking out new ways of telling others about God or are you still teaching the same way you were 10 years ago.

I see in my own life areas where I’m just bobbing along.  It can be nice sometimes to rest on the excuse that I have two small children and am so so busy.  That I’m swamped at work.  That “this is the way this ministry has always been done and it’s worked fine.”  Is fine alright with you?  Are you content to remain where you are, doing what you can or do you dream of something more?  If you don’t dream of something more, why not?

There are times in my life when I feel a burning discontent in my heart and spirit.  It usually comes after a time of just bobbing along.  Sometimes bobbing along and maintaining is all I have to give at that time, and that’s fine.  We all have times where we need to pare back.  The birth of a child, the illness of a loved one, the huge project at work.  But after those times are done, I feel that discontent.  I believe that discontent reflects a need I have and a need in all of us to strive.  This discontent reflects God’s vision of us that we can’t always see for ourselves.  He sees the wondrous creation he has made me.   He knows better than I what I am created for and what I can accomplish.  He sees the satisfaction I would have, the sense of serving to my potential and the peace and excitement that comes from stretching myself to seek better than where I am.  He knows me and delights in how he has made me.

It makes me think of that famous verse in Jeremiah 29:11

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

What we often don’t associate with that verse is that it is part of a letter written to the exiles in Babylon.  God tells them to settle there, marry, build homes, to wait.  They are in a holding pattern, bobbing along.  God then says that after this time of waiting and maintaining, he will call them out.  He will call them to something new and glorious.  He will draw them out of this maintaining into something new and exciting.  But when he calls them out, they must go.

God wishes so much more for us than we can imagine.  What if I used this discontent to where God leads?  What would happen if I were to seek him and ask that he show me a glimpse of the plans he has for me?  It can be frightening and daunting but what a life I would miss if I stayed bobbing along, limited by my own imagination for my life.