Everyone sure is quiet on this issue. Does that mean that you don't have time to respond or dialogue, or that you have finally dropped the computer and started spending face-to-face time with family, friends and neighbors? I accidentally posted the 4/21's post on my personal blog and have gotten a little action there, but I'm still interested in the good and the bad of time in regards to your life and your time slots.
You may think we're totally off-base, and that's cool...but let's interact. I was listening to one of the small group gurus, a pioneer in the whole small group movement in the 90's, and he was discussing a shift in community life that he identified as a shift from the small group as study centers to learning communities. Learning communities are places where opinions and perspectives are shared openly with others and we each become teachers to one another. For some this is uncomfortable because we are used to having one person read to us and tell us what we are supposed to believe and say, all the while keeping our thoughts and opinions to ourselves. We do this mostly out of fear - fear of misspeaking, fear of being "wrong," or fear of not knowing something. In our INTAKE learning community, we encourage open and honest dialogue. We want to process the topics together. Part of this is due to our inability to gather somewhere to discuss regularly, but a greater part of this is allowing each of us to process at our own pace. Five minutes here or there, just might be what God uses to keep us engaged in a conversation or blog thread that we would miss if the only option was a classroom setting once a week.
Oh yeah, and if you're skered thet misspellled wirds and stuff are imbarassing, dont be...we ain't english majors...well cameron is, but he don't care iether.
A couple of years ago at our old church we were challenged to schedule our entire week in hour or half-hour blocks. Everything needed to go on the schedule (sleeping, exercising, commuting, small group, sports, etc). It seemed a bit much but when we really dug into it the point was making time for the things of God.
ReplyDeleteI came across my schedule the other day (tucked away in my bible case) and grimaced at how poorly I've kept the times I've set aside for God. But I was also encouraged to see some changes that we have made over the years to open up more space on my schedule (nights at home instead of at work, less sports on the schedule, etc).
I've never done real well with keeping a schedule so I found myself hiding it away and missing the point of the whole exercise. It was about creating margin in my life not keeping a schedule.
This series has challenged me to get the schedule back out and find ways to make changes (be more strict about my time off from work-even though the pressure is always there to do more; spend one-on-one time with my kids talking about God's plan in our lives or just sharing a hot chocolate; sitting and watching a show I can't stand because it means getting to spend time with my wife instead of blogging or catching up on the sports scores; and there is so much more)
Ultimately, I realize that I have plenty of time in my week it's really a matter of how I choose to schedule it.
My husband & I are very closely examining the ways in which we have been investing the time we've been given. This series has really opened our eyes to where the mundane life stuff has crowded back in across our margins. It's interesting to me that every so often, we have to have a serious 'plate clearing' so we can really focus on the stuff that lines up with our values.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about how much time I'm spending in the car on the way to work, dropping the kids off, picking the husband up, driving from here to there, there to here, around and back again. But if I live where I work, iof my kids go to school where I we live, and we do life with the people we live with/go to church with, those times in the car dramatically diminish.
So, with all of this, we are looking forward to some pretty huge life changes including changing where we live, changing where I work, changing where the kids go to school so we can do what we really want to do, which is invest in eternity! This is the most exciting 'plate clearing' yet!