Margin

After a couple of weeks of travel and a bout of Covid, I’m working to settle back into some semblance of a routine.  January is nearly over and I’m still trying to find my way into this New Year.  My Christmas tree remains up, which I’m not mad about, but I do realize it will need to be packed up at some point.  And yet time marches on and February is knocking at my door.  

What are your routines looking like as the end of January approaches?  Do you feel that your rhythms are helping you or hindering you?  I noticed, again, that my screen time has been creeping up.  I don’t like it when I waste time scrolling.  I especially don’t like to see the weekly update on my phone tell me that my time has increased from the week before.  Ugh.  So, I’ll be taking some time to figure out why that rhythm is out of whack and reevaluating how to slow my scroll.  

Do you have any rhythms that need evaluating?  Anything that isn’t working for you or that you recognize needs your attention?  

Maybe your year has started out exactly as you imagined it would, or maybe it has been anything but expected.  Either way, I want to offer an invitation this week to examine our margins.  Some of you have heard the story of how my sixth-grade science teacher used to walk around with a pair of scissors and cut off the margins of our writing paper.  We were not allowed to have any words cross over the red lines of the page; if they did he’d chop them off and move on.  

I have found that there is more room to breathe and more space for rest when we allow our margins to remain void.  Where are you making space to exist without doing?  This is a hard one for me.  I like this idea, though I’m not sure of its origin, “We are human beings, not human doings.”  I am very good at doing, but less good at just being.  I am working on it.  

We will begin to tackle the practice of rest next week.  I keep putting it off.  Honestly, because I’m so bad at it.  But I’ve decided you can just come along for the messy bits as I wrestle with Sabbath and God’s desire for us to embrace celebration, laughter, and rest.  

So until next week, I hope your margins will be blissfully empty and that you are able to settle into rhythms that bring renewal rather than hurry.  
 

~ Melissa