How to be stuck in your rut like Jesus

February 8, 2015

5 Epiphany

Mark 1:29-39

So it turns out that Jesus and I have the same problem with prayer.

I’ve been working on creating a more consistent morning practice of spending time with God.  Like many of you, I’m guessing, sometimes I feel stuck in the rut of my daily routine.  Every day making breakfast, overseeing lunch creation and outfit choices, reminding kids to brush teeth and turn in homework, schlepping everyone to school, buckling down to work and in what feels like the blink of an eye leaving work to begin the afternoon routine of picking kids up from school, trying to fit in some fun time with them while doing house chores, overseeing playdates and piano practicing and homework, schlepping to practices and Boy Scouts, cooking dinner, reading nighttime books, getting kids to bed, attending whatever meeting I have that night.  It’s all good and it’s all important, but it just doesn’t leave a lot of space.  So I’ve been hoping that starting out the day with some quiet time with God might help me to live a little more patiently and kindly the rest of the time.

I’ve been getting up early and heading downstairs to find a quiet place.  I tiptoe downstairs in the dark, doing my best not to disturb the three sleeping munchkins whose rooms I slip past.  I purposefully sit in a corner of the house that isn’t under their rooms so any creaking won’t wake them.  And I settle in.  Sometimes I journal, sometimes I draw, sometimes I just try to sit in silence, sometimes I have coffee with Jesus.

And that works every so often.  But more often, as I’m guessing many of you can also relate, one of the kids wakes up despite my best efforts and runs down to join me.  Or stands over my shoulder and asks questions about my “art project” or what I’m writing in my journal.  Or needs help with breakfast or homework.  Or Holden comes down earlier than I expect and makes coffee and wants to chat.  There is almost always something that feels like an abrupt and premature ending to my prayer time.  Almost always, I am left feeling unfinished.  I end up a little edgy and impatient and not a particularly great model for my family of the benefits of regular prayer time.  I’ve been feeling like I need Virginia Woolf to come and find me a Room of My Own.

Now, often I’ll bring into my morning time whatever scripture I’m working with for a sermon in the coming week or two.  So I was very pleased with myself to discover that Jesus in our Gospel story for this morning is having the very same dilemma I’ve been having with prayer.  We see here sort of a typical-day-in-the-life of Jesus.  He started in the synagogue, then headed to the home of his disciples, where he healed and taught and was surrounded by a whole city’s worth of searching and hurting souls.  He slept briefly and then, trying to find a moment to himself, got up before anyone else woke to sneak off and pray.  It is still very dark and he steals off to a remote location.  What more could the poor man do to get some time and space for himself?  But before he can even settle in, here come his disciples to hunt him down and push him along towards another busy day with him preaching and healing and schlepping throughout Galilee.  He can’t catch a break.

I saw myself in that.  Trying to find a few minutes in a remote location in the dark before starting off the day.  Trying to hold off the barrage of tasks and responsibilities for just a little longer.

But almost as soon as I started comparing myself sympathetically with Jesus, I started to realize that, truth be told, I could actually relate more closely to the disciples.  Like me, the disciples had trouble quieting down into silence, demanded immediate results, and were too fidgety or busy with their own agendas to wait and watch while the mystery unfolded around them.  They had trouble being content just with the presence of Jesus among them in their everyday lives.

And even surrounded by his distracted and busy disciples, look how Jesus responds.  Rather than feeling put-upon and sorry for himself (like I have been - sorry family!), Jesus just gets up and returns to his teaching and preaching.  Jesus doesn’t see the disciples as intrusions.  He seems to be entirely refreshed by his prayer time and ready to begin again.  He seems to exude assurance that God is just as surely present in and with and through him out in the world as God is in the contemplative and intimate moments of prayer.

And that seems like a way of living that could transform everything.  But I’m not sure I could say I’d experienced it much other than in small fragments until last Tuesday.  Last Tuesday was a snow day and school was cancelled.  So I called a friend of mine who was very pregnant and also recovering from the flu to see if I could take her kids and give her a little rest time.  And learned that she was in labor!  This was the day the long-awaited baby would arrive. And from that moment until about 8 hours later when I learned that her son had been born, she was in my mind and in my heart in a very tangible way.  As I took my kids sledding I thought of her.  As we ice-skated I thought of her.  As I prepared two dinners so I could set aside an extra meal for her family I thought of her.  It was in the background of my whole day.  When I got the text that her baby had arrived and everyone was doing well, it was such a gift - such an answer to prayer - my heart overflowed with joy.  

Just down the street was this beautiful new creation.  Before this moment, he had been (to me) more of an idea.  A growing presence with his mother.  Something-to-be in the future.  Now he was present - moving, hiccuping, eating, waving his little arms.  Suddenly he was part of a family - someone that would forever after always be a critical part of how each one of them sees themselves.  What an incredible day’s work!  

In the aftermath of that day, and in conjunction with this story about Jesus interrupted in prayer yet continuing his ministry so obviously full of God, I wonder how I could live more of my life that way.  How can I keep my family in my thoughts and prayers more deliberately while they are at school or at work?  How can I go about my tasks at home - cooking, laundry, schlepping - as ministry rather than chore?  How can my parenting and marriage become more connected to my prayer life?  How can I see my work here at St. Aidan’s - not just the obvious like sermon-writing and pastoral care - but the administrative stuff and all my daily interactions as an offering to the world?  Instead of unconsciously sorting my life into boxes labeled “mundane” and “holy”, how can all of these pieces become part of my life with God?  Maybe that would change not just how I think about the pieces of my life, but how others experience them too?  

I’m a work in progress.  We all are.  Every day, each one of us is birthing new creations that we can dedicate to God.  And each day we are taking care of God’s creations that already exist.  Each day is an opportunity to transform the pieces of our lives.

I wonder if there is a time when you were able to see something your were you were doing in your day-to-day life as prayer or as a creative offering to God?  Or maybe, is there a piece of your life that you wish you could transform?  Amen.