July 1st

Today is July 1^st: the day that every teacher has a miniature panic attack because summer is half over.  (If you think that school doesn’t start until September or that summer is three months long, you are living under a rock.)  If you don’t believe me, just ask any teacher.  They all experience the “July 1^st phenomenon."

This year though, I had some premature panicking back in June and instead now find myself in a relatively healthy spot today on July 1.  I have been thinking about the fact that there will always be more to do.  I can’t think of a time in the last fifteen years when every item on my checklist was completed.  There will always be one more email or phone call to make, one more errand to run, one more goal to pursue, etc.  That is life!  Maybe there’s a point when you no longer feel this way, but I think that as long as I am cognizant, I will have things I want to accomplish each day even if it’s one last letter to write to my family. 

So then what do we do if the “to-do list” will always be there?  We accept it.  We take Sabbath anyway.  I love the way Mark Buchanan explains this in his book The Rest of God:

            “The lie the taskmasters want you to swallow is that you cannot rest until your work’s all done, and done better than you’re currently doing it.  But the truth is, the work’s never done, and never done quite right.  It’s always more than you can finish and less than you had hoped for.

            So what?  Get this straight: The rest of God -- the rest God gladly gives so that we might discover the part of God we’re missing -- is not a reward for finishing.  It’s not a bonus for work well done. 

It’s a sheer gift.  It’s a stop-work order in the midst of work that’s never complete, never polished.  Sabbath is not the break we’re allotted at the tail end of completing all our tasks and chores, the fulfillment of all our obligations.  It’s the rest we take smack-dab in the middle of them, without apology, without guilt, and for no better reason than God told us we could.”

And so June slips into July, and August will be here before we know it as well.  But that’s ok.  I still have things I hope to get done before the end of the summer, but it will be all right if I don’t.  My heart can be at rest whether it’s the summer or the busiest day of the school year because God is good and reigning on the throne.

[Side note: this “July 1^st” theme seemed oddly familiar, and sure enough I mentioned it in a blog post two years ago.  Clearly, it’s a lesson I’m still learning…]