Good Like a Medicine

Perhaps I should post something, so that people don’t think the almond mocha killed me! We had a busy weekend in our family, and there were some great times.

First - WORSHIP! Yesterday I leaned over to Dean, our worship pastor, and said, “I love our church!” He, Eric, and I led the services in the gym with David on cello and Rick on keyboard. It was an “acoustic preview” service during our regular worship hours to give people a feel of the style of the kind of music in which they will participate for our church’s new corporate worship setting at 8:15 on Sundays. God has given us the wonderful challenge of making more room since the other four services are full and will be increasingly maxxed-out next month since our congregation pulls a large collegiate population from our city. This is very exciting. The reason I love our church is because Jesus is supreme. The staff work together so hard to keep Jesus as our head and to line everything we say and do with our minds, hearts, mouths, and bodies with the word of God. I’m pretty much falling off my chair every week to hear how our pastor is going to bring the Word of God to us next. This week’s message (full audio here) was so rich with the challenges involving the Christian’s discipline of clothing himself with the character of Christ.

Among other things one pratical challenge I took here was the concept of my daily life’s margin. Margin is what I have left after all the demands of the day have been met, and many times I can be “operating in the red.” (Young mothers know this all too well. Agreed?)

“As we have seen, Jesus never seemed in a hurry… [Many times] he was conspicuousy absent. Creating a margin (or that space between our load and our limits) is perhaps the best way to create a Christlike spontaneity and interruptabily back into our lives. Margin blunts hurry [sickness] and allows us to focus on the divine appointments God sends our way.”

Getting the margin back in my life, so that I can commune with the Savior in His Word, may mean saying, “No,” to outside commitments, zeroing in to the needs of my family and organizing my time, bowing on my knees for a few minutes instead of folding the laundry or answering the phone. It may mean getting up earlier and going to bed earlier. But this margin is key, and it is first in my battle with sin and obedience to God’s commands to clothe myself with compassion and kindness towards others. Our pastor likes to say, “We are leaky buckets.” If we don’t go the well every day, we will be dry and fruitless and weak against the arrows of the devil.

I think God has really helped me become better at organizing my time and implementing a family schedule in the last nine to twelve months of our family life. What a blessing it is that our children take naps and sleep at night, and that allows me a regular “margin.” The issue is not that I find the margin but what I do with that precious margin. Lord, help me guard this time and make it your own!

SECOND - “Battle of the Bands” My husband played with some other guys in a contest in Myrtle Beach, SC this weekend, and I’m happy and proud to say they will be playing at “Shoutfest” on September 1st! So if you’re down this way, drop by Broadway at the Beach and hear the Marc Collins band! The kids and I were their “roadies,” and we had a great time.