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I find that when life throws me a curve I tend to rely on my own resources to handle it. How foolish and conceited. I’m foolish because trusting in self is like going to the desert for water. I’m conceited because I think I can rescue myself when I really need rescuing.

Thankfully the Bible points me gently back to a better way. Look at the following verses.

• Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord! (Psalm 130:1)
• Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. (Psalm 69:14)
• I called on your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit; (Lamentations 3:55)
• I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. (Jonah 2:2)

What direction does the Bible point us when trouble comes? Back to God. Where else have we to go?

This past week I received an email from a friend at Christ Community that showed me so much Christian maturity. I’ve pasted an excerpt below.

“I am doing better too, spending more time with God because at the moment, my relationship with him is my only source of satisfaction and spiritual fuel in life. I now realise that all my hope for the future is in him, because I have no ability in myself to bring anything good to fruition in my current state. I guess this was always the case, but I just didn’t really believe it in my heart until now. My circumstances have forced me to put biblical truth into practice, making me desperately trust God for pretty much everything. I guess that is one of His purposes from this whole painful saga.”

I’m humbled and strengthened. Where are you going with your troubles? Who are you turning to? What are you seeking to comfort yourself with in light of hard times? God is sufficient. God is a faithful friend. God is able.

Father, convince us that you are sufficient so we will say, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!”

Grace to you,

David Cunningham

david@christcommunity.org.au

Community teams are the central means of Christ Community Church fulfilling its purpose of enjoying and declaring God’s grace in Christ for the good of Brisbane, Australia, and the world.  Involvement at Christ Community is primarily seen through one’s involvement in a community team and the relationships that form from them.

Contact Richard (richandcherie9@gmail.com) for more information.

There’s lots of exciting ways you can get involved!

Check out our website for details www.uni-impact.com.au

When: 1st Sunday of each month after the 10 AM church service

Where: Different locations/homes around Brisbane

More info: Ask Remko or Eline, (elineveenstra@hotmail.com) (phone: 0410 609 371)

Christ Community West (www.christcommunitywest.org.au) has been going since August 16, 2009.  Visit their website for all the relevant details. 

Having spent the last eight months in North India, you can well imagine how different it is to be back in Oz. I think I’ve actually skipped the whole first stage of reverse culture-shock, and sailed straight into loving everything about home! Or maybe I’m experiencing reverse-reverse culture-shock?  In any case, life right now is a bit rose-tinted.

For those who aren’t aware, my co-worker, Claire, and I have been living and working in the Himalayan foothills to support a women’s ministry. It’s been two weeks since we touched down on Aussie soil again, the salient feature of which has been my amazing capacity for sleep! I blame Delhi belly, a virus, jetlag, and maaaybe a little of my humanness. 

Despite the fatigue, life in Australia seems to keep reminding me of how effortless it is. The roads are fast, predictable and completely devoid of cows. The supermarkets are loaded with everything I need and much more besides, and I can carry my shopping bag outside without fear of thieving monkeys.  I can reveal my ankles in public and not get stared at!  When I go out I don’t get harassed by beggars and peddlers and rickshaw drivers and people wanting to practice their English, and any number of other applicants.  I can indulge in dairy products not based on buffalo milk.  Tap water is drinkable.   Shower water is pre-heated.  And perhaps the greatest novelty …da da daaaaaa…  I can throw my used toilet paper straight into the bowl! At pretty much every turn there’s a marked absence of inconveniences and obstacles.

One thing I do miss is the public-ness of daily life where I lived.  Here in Brisbane lives seem hidden behind hedges and walls.  But where I was based, the locals live in poorly-lit single-room homes, so they conduct most of their affairs out on their doorsteps.  I would see old men brushing their teeth, wives washing clothes, children squatting bare-bottomed over the gutters, babies flapping happily on their backs, men gathered to chat, and many just sitting in their doorways, watching everyone else.

In India my energies were largely focused on understanding and communicating in Hindi; navigating treacherous cross-cultural communication waters; and avoiding the dangers of the roads, spiritual opposition, tummy sicknesses, dogs and monkeys, and the like. Now my biggest concern is the obligation to pack all these newly available moments with productivity (that or sleep).

Which brings me to my freshly re-acquainted quandary: how does one distinguish between the ‘shoulds’ pressing in from every side regarding how to spend one’s strength?  I’m finding I have this strange sense of urgency to fill every moment with busyness, to produce, or at least to appear to!  How much am I allowed to connect with people, journal and ‘process’, pray and meditate on God’s Word, and dare I say, rest?  Work hours are far more likely to be productive depending on what these other categories look like.  In which case, perhaps they’re all part of work too.  Even rest.

Hebrews 4:11 exhorts me to ‘make every effort to enter that rest’ – the rest offered by placing my faith in Christ.  The rest that can never be experienced by the hard-hearted (Heb 3).  Perhaps it’s because I’m just plain tired right now that I’m starting to wonder whether life and ministry doesn’t have to look like this.  Could my urgency to produce have displaced the resources upon which I rely to be productive?

So I’m clearing the ‘shoulds’; working on resting even in work.  Christians tend to err on the side of asceticism in response to Scripture’s warnings not to be lazy or self-indulgent, forgetting that both extremes are not part of God’s design.  The greatest challenge seems to be to discern whether I’m listening to Pharaoh’s accusation, ‘Lazy, that’s what you are—lazy! That is why you keep saying, “Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord”’ (Ex. 5:17). Or to my Heavenly Father, who seems to be whispering, ‘I love you. Do you get that? Will you clear enough of your “shoulds” to come and hear how much I love you?’

Last October, Cherie and I took our three kids and an enormous amount of luggage to New Zealand for two months of long service leave. Such a unique time in our lives! Yes, we did see a lot of beautiful places, and took plenty of photos. We also took away some more precious things that are well worth sharing.

The question I most got asked before we left was, ‘So what are you going to do with your time?’ I asked myself the same question a lot, but eventually realised that maybe that’s not the right question. Good rest is just as much, maybe more about what you don’t do, what you rest from, what you stop doing. Kind of like panning for gold (we stayed a while in Queenstown, once a big goldrush area). How they got the gold was not by picking it out, but  by removing everything else, all the superfluous rocks and dirt. The gold is what’s left at the end.

So what gold did we find? Apart from rare quantity time with Cherie and the kids in a chaotic season of life, three nuggets were simplicity, identity, beauty. As for the first two, I was never sure why, but it always seemed to me that the people who best grasp God’s love are those who know how to be still. We tasted something of why that is. Being away from all the things that can drive my priorities and make me busy, I realised more that my significance and worth aren’t wrapped up in what I do, but in the love the Father and His Son Jesus have for me. As for beauty, there are places over there that take your breath away. Sometimes you get this strange feeling like you’re coming home. That longing for home isn’t a longing to live in New Zealand. It’s a longing for our home in the new heaven and earth, where beauty will be the air we breathe in a perfect world and in the presence of Jesus, the source of it all. That’s the home we truly long for, the ultimate rest.