Servant

I'll start with a line or two from Demon Hunter:

"I need a heart
that carries on through the pain
When the walls start collapsing again.
Give me a soul
that never ceases to follow,
Despite the infection within"
-Deteriorate

I've talked about a day to just rest before, and I really think it is important enough to say so here. I mowed the grass today. That seems like little, and rather it also seems like a requirement, and thats exactly what I'm getting at. I absolutely despise using the typical methods of biblical relation, so I'm gonna put it into story mode and we'll all be happy.

So there was this family - ok, so it was a huge family. Not what we know of in America - probably not one that we've ever seen other than this one time in history. This family was enormous: thousands of people living in one place. They were outcasts, the dirt of the earth, the slaves of a conglomerate. Every thing they did was under the watch of someone else who had no pity on them, and more likely had hatred by default for them. This family was forced into hard physical labor, the kind of stuff we see now in Africa (where people must work the full extent of their life to pay off an incredibly small debt). They had to labor in the heat, every day, all day, and were given very little comforts, very few means of survival beyond the basics to keep breathing. Old and young alike, the cruelty was unrivaled.

This is wrong.

How do you know it's wrong? Is it because there is cruelty? Is it because they must work without breaks or vacations?

What if we rearranged the story just a tad.. Lets say these people were simply highly ambitious. They worked every day because they wanted to build the most amazing resume, or construct the largest monument (to... themselves?)

Is that wrong?

Some might say, "What's wrong with ambition? If someone can out-play the next player, then more power to him" right? Now, I have to quote some bible here, but meh..

This family was eventually set free. Yeah, completely free. It was such a massive ordeal that there were books and stories and songs and plays and monuments built for hundreds and hundreds of years. This was a BIG deal. No longer were they under a heavy, immovable tyrant of injustice. They were completely free.

Upon their freedom, they are given a few things to do - not like a checklist, but a "do unto others" kind of thing. At that point, God was showing himself to this family through a couple dudes. These men were "made as God to pharaoh." They showed the compassion that God has for His people, and then the massive amounts of annoying things God can do to people who don't like His people.

In the next chapter of the lives of this family, they were taken to a mountain and told how to be like God to the rest of the world - along with being told to actually DO those things.

Heres the part which is amazing: God actually said to them (in my paraphrase) "Look at yourself. You worked every day of your life. No more. When I made the world, I even took a day off. I am giving you a FREE DAY - realize that you are NOT a machine, you are NOT made solely for work. You were made for so much more... TAKE the time to NOT do something, no matter how hard it is"

My day is Thursday. I usually plan on having dinner with someone, or maybe going to get bread. I have vowed to refuse being forced into service on Thursdays. There is nothing that says I won't relax on other days, or that I won't help out in an emergency on a Thursday, but when it comes to planning stuff, I stick to planning people time, time to increase my love. Time to recoup and prepare for the weekend. Time to think about my life. Time...

So may you come to a place where you can throw aside all the "have to's" and relax for a day - yes, people will say you are lazy, but God designed you for it: take it!