Between last week’s wonderful vacation getaway with my wife in Jamaica and this week’s prepping for VP3’s upcoming Life Rhythms: What Matters Most? webinar conversation, I am finding myself aware yet again of the need to pay attention to the rhythms of my life.
Amidst all the stuff of life—demands and tasks, relationships and expectations, intentions and decisions, etc—I need perspective. And for me, it is often very simple images that cause me to think or re-think where I find myself, where we find ourselves. This poem “Fire” has consistently provided me, and many others, a window into our pace, our work, our relationships, and our attentiveness in life.
I would encourage you to simply allow this poem, as you read it aloud 2 or 3 times, to stir your thoughts…What jumps out? What does this poem have to do with your life?
Fire
What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
When we are able to build
open spaces
in the same way
we have learned
to pile on logs,
then we come to see how
it is fuel, and the absence of fuel
together, that make fire possible.
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire
grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.
–Judy Brown
Where is there breathing space in your life, your family’s life, in the life of your church community? Or are you uncritically just piling log after log after log onto the fire?
The dominant rhythms of our culture can so often squeeze out those things we consider to be most important. We can easily fall into patterns of life and work and relationship and even worship, that are out of alignment with who we are and what God is calling us to be and do in the world.
If you currently need a space and place to invite perspective on the rhythm of your life, then join Pam Edwards and me this Wednesday (12-1:30p CT) for our webinar Life Rhythms: What Matters Most? where we will dive deeper into this topic with our special guests Dave and Beth Booram, co-founders of Fall Creek Abbey and authors of When Faith Becomes Sight: Opening Your Eyes to God’s Presence All Around You (InterVarsity Press, 2019).
Our What Matters Most series, and this VP3 educational event, in particular, will explore in practical ways the underlying mindsets and decisions and practices you can implement to cultivate a rhythm of life you hear God inviting you toward. What does matter most?
Register Now For This Free VP3 Webinar
