If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones.... Luke 16:10a
I think I'm in the middle of learning a lesson. I have the bad tendency to push myself to the very edge of what I can tolerate before crashing. Today happens to be a crash day. The bad thing about a crash day for me is that when I crash I do it big. Today I've moved from bed to couch to bed and back to the couch again. My entire body aches and I haven't managed much more than taking care of my 8 month old.
The sad thing is I knew it was coming. I knew yesterday that I was starting to crash, but I ignored the signs and did all of the things I was determined to do with my day. I didn't take care of myself. I didn't slow down and stop to focus on rest even though I knew I needed it. And so I ignored one of the things God's been stressing to me the most lately. That I need to be faithful in rest.
Faithful in rest. Kind of sounds crazy when we are pushed in every direction we look to do more. Take on more commitments at work, at church and in our community. We don't really care whether we are good at said things, we just keep piling them on because we are asked to. Never stopping to rest until our bodies completely and utterly let us down.
Today as I sit here, my body screaming at me that it needed to rest long before I gave in, the passage in Scripture came to mind where Jesus tells His disciples "If you are faithful in little things. you will be faithful in large ones.... Luke 16:10a (NLT). I've read this verse I don't know how many times, but today I suddenly realize that the very first thing that God gave to my care I'm abusing. I'm not always faithful in caring for my body. I put it under stress it was never intended to endure and then I refuse to let it rest when it begs for it. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that our body's are a temple of the Holy Spirit. Somehow right now I'm picturing the Holy Spirit looking very much like a homeless person if He's trying to survive in the mess that is my body today. I'm pretty sure the roof is leaking and a few windows are broken. Which is where the importance of investing in soul rest comes into play.
A scene from It's a Wonderful Life comes to mind in which George comes "home" to Mary the night of their wedding and the roof is leaking and there are posters hiding the broken windows. There's no rest in a place where the roof and windows leak. When something is allowed to fall into disrepair it effects the entire structure and those who reside in it. I'm starting to realize how failure to rest my body and soul effects my life.
Sometimes I think we might have been our smartest in some ways as children. Before we knew we were suppose to abuse our bodies in the name of adulthood we invested in resting when we needed to and giving our all to the things we enjoyed. Somewhere along the way we lost that approach to life. We crammed our lives with activities forgetting to set aside time to rest and invest in our souls. After all we were adults and that was kids stuff. And our bodies have suffered.
So the lesson I'm learning today is that I haven't taken the time to invest in Spiritual Whitespace the last week the way my soul needed and I feel it both physically and emotionally. I'm drained and so tired. While my roof isn't leaking like a sieve, I'm pretty sure I have a cracked window that needs repaired, but with that realization comes the opportunity to restore this temple before it becomes uninhabitable. And so today I discovered that to invest in spiritual whitespace is to be faithful in one little thing so I'm ready for the large ones.
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