Good morning everyone. It is 8:47 AM. It’s the 30th of May. I can’t believe we are almost at the end of this month. I have been reflecting on my lifestyle and I just kind of wanted to share a bit about it. So, I often, well, not just my lifestyle, what I’ve observed from other people’s lifestyles and what I have really just been embracing for awhile now.
So I find that we are all just so busy. I was having a conversation with someone the other day as a word of kind of encouragement of doing things together and their response was, basically echoing busyness and I remember just basically saying that, but we are all busy and we have to find the time because without that, we won’t see each other. We won’t build the connections that we’re supposed to have. We won’t build those relationships and busyness will consistently keep becoming our excuse for why we don’t see each other. Everyone’s doing something all the time. Um, it’s , you know, the world has, it’s literally formed us in that way in terms of making us so busy and we have to be aware of it and make sure that we are not feeding into this busy, sort of ethos of this is how we’re going to do things. We’re going to always, you know, we’re going to be busy and we’re going to keep chasing this thing and prioritising this and not prioritising the relationships, not prioritising the time I spend with family, with friends, with people.
It’s made me think about slow living. I love. I definitely love slow living. I’ve definitely been embracing it a lot more and it’s mainly for the reasons of what I’ve just said. It allows time to switch off, having that mindset and it allows you to really just be present in your day to day, starting mornings, very mindfully. My husband, myself and my daughter, we tend to start mornings off with praying, and then we then later, in the day, we’ll go into a time of family worship, and it’s a time that I really find to be so important because it allows us to regroup, it allows us to learn and grow together and it allows us to just be in each other’s presence. Learning about our greatest teacher, who is Jesus Christ. Slow living just allows you to unplug. It allows us to remove ourselves from being so connected, being online and just centre and focus. Even things like, you know, when reading the Bible, having a physical Bible, it’s so important because whilst there are tools out there that can help you to read it online, it’s just not the same and I feel like that can still have a danger of pulling you into being busy or being so connected and then maybe getting distracted.
Slow living just helps to embrace life with action. It makes you shift in a different way, makes you carry yourself differently. It makes you more aware of what’s going on in your surroundings and it makes me think a lot about the scripture, Matthew 11, chapter 11 in Matthew, verse 28.
I’ll read the King’s James version.
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
This is what the Lord does. He wants us to come to him. He wants us to almost put that busyness from this hard labour where it literally is doing so much and it’s bringing us, not joy, it’s bringing us time of no presence when we should be in his presence. Those that are labouring, just come to me, and I will give you rest. I will give you rest. Rest is so important to have that time and just be able to lay your head down or just be able to not be doing things and just be in the presence of others. Really see what’s going on, maybe because of your busy lifestyle.
You may have missed so many things in front of you that people are going through or you’ve maybe not seen your children as much as you should have, or maybe you’ve not sewn into marriage, and you’ve seen the challenges come with that now, or your parents are getting old, and you’re getting older, and you’ve not spent time with them. There are so many things, so many aspects to slow living that I really do see the benefit of.
I just want to put that there. Just remember that we’ve been created to be in community with other people not to be isolated in our busyness and don’t let your busy life take over. Don’t allow this hustle culture, this rat race to. I know it’s difficult. The world, it pushes this forward, but this is why our Lord Jesus Christ gives us a different way of life and he gives us rest. He helps us to centre ourselves back to what’s so important. So just don’t forget that and you know, I am speaking to myself too, this is something I keep reminding myself, and that’s why it’s so important to be in the word, to just align yourself in the way you’re supposed to, so that you can fight off all the noise in the world.
So. Yeah, go to the Lord. Let him give you rest. On another note, today, my husband and I are actually and my daughter, we’re going to see some friends and watch the PSG v Arsenal game. So that’s going to be really exciting. We are Arsenal fans. So it’s going to be quite great, you know, just really nice to see what happens. If it’s God’s will, I pray that they win. That Arsenal win. But you can imagine the preparation that they’ve gone into to play and get to this point. Winning is one thing, but it’s not everything.
I feel like them getting to this point just shows them that, you know what, we are a team and as long as we’re connected and we’re finding time to grow as a team, then good things can happen from that. They obviously have such busy lifestyles and when they do have time to rest, it’s time to rest.
So let us not forget what rest can do for us all and just kind of wind down a bit in terms of what you’re doing and just, centre back. Go to the Lord and let him, let him give you rest. But yeah, I pray that this journal blesses you and may your home be filled with peace this week.
Speak to you next time. Bye.
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