POST by LIZ: Slumber Time

So, last night our forest green gates welcomed 214 Nicaraguan´s into our abode.  They swam, played no-rules basketball and attempted to hit a ping pong (seriously, they can point their slingshot and successfully hit an active iguana yet fail at hitting a plastic yellow ball!).

They carefully placed bricks on the Jenga´s wobbly tower, a couple were shooed away from some of the darker corners of our center, and one was prevented from leaving with his backpack stuffed full of our cookies by our sharp-eagle-eyed armed guard – BRAVO Nestor!   

Hard core soccer was played throughout the night. Sezni, Raf and Brian wowed the crowd with their board-breaking skills they adopted in TaeKwondo - I think Raf astounded himself when the board snapped in two. Needless-to-say, he spent the rest of the night parading his two halves of timber around the garden (after a hard night of being paraded, the boards are currently resting on the pillow next to Raf´s snoring head).

Feeling the power surging through his body, Rafael independently took up the task of trying to break our outdoor coffee table in two - then fled to the kitchen, when he failed to do so, grabbed a pencil and snapped it in two while yelling out “YA!”.

When it came to the devotion, Jed, Fran and the team had them enthralled.  The night buzzed with excitement, our community´s air was filled with merriment and God was present.  

Waking up this morning, my house is mute!  This is a rare moment in the Brien household and I picture those that know us well nodding their heads in total agreement.  All are sleeping – even the mice – and I do literally mean that!  I pick up my Oswald Chamber´s “My Utmost for His Highest” devotion to find the message also follows the theme of sleep!

I am directed to that pivotal moment in the garden of Gethsemane, right before Jesus is arrested.  After urging his disciples to remain alert and prayerful, he finds them konked out! (is that even a proper word??) (Matt 26:43 for all you Biblical scholars out there!).  

We all know it well: They had been given a spiritual task to do, yet they blew it! They slept!

But who am I to criticise and point the finger! I take off my judge´s wig and muse on the many times Jed and I have failed to do what our spirits have wanted to do and - in a sense - slept.

In our early days of marriage, in those dreaded Mount Druitt, Sydney times, our lack of finances and fear immobilised us. My own sense of failure and narrow mindedness prevented me from jumping completely on board with what was buried deep within – my spirit was willing but my outer body was physically weakened.

I now mentality walk through my timeline and shudder when I see the many “sleeping moments” I´ve had in my life. Times which have consumed my energies and fulfilled my physical needs, yet have not matched up with my spiritual calling.   

Jed and I often reminisce on these times which sparks a “if only” dialogue and normally ends with groans and moans when we think of all the times we have been spiritually idle and wasted precious time due to our physical state.

Time and time again tiredness, lack of finances and fear have prevented us from forging forward and doing what the Lord has placed in our spirit.  I have over and over and OVER again allowed my physical situations and states-of-mind prevent me from completely fulfilling my spiritual inclination. I contain many chapters within me that depict a multitude of moments like those disciples, where I didn´t obey because of my physical state which sent me into deep spiritual stagnation.

Today, when I read this passage, I´m just loving Jesus´ response. The first time he nudges the sleepyheads awake he recognises that his friends are faced with the conflict between the spiritual wanting, yet the physical struggles to follow through.

In a sense, when Jesus acknowledges the dilemma his disciples have, it enforces the internal conflict Jesus was battling with. “My father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me…” in other words… my physical state really doesn´t want to do what my spiritual state is willing to.

Jesus leaves, and despite his prompting, the disciples fail to keep their physical need of sleep at bay. When Jesus returns to the group, he finds his prayer warriors snoring their heads off - with mouths opened and drool hanging out (ok – allow me to have some artistic license here).

He doesn´t shake them awake and yell at them, he walks away, leaving them to their forty winks, while he himself wrestles with the inner conflict of the physical verses the spiritual.  

When he returns the third time he wakes them with a rhetorical question “Are you still sleeping and resting?” which we think, “uh oh, now they are really gonna cop it!” and I don´t know about you, but if I were Jesus I would have then dwelt on what they didn´t do, how they failed the second and third time, and perhaps would have conducted practice drills and workshop sessions on how to keep your eyes open when Jesus says to do so.  I would have forced those men to see the failures that they were.  

But Jesus isn´t me! - Thank God! - And he isn´t one to focus on our failures.  He didn´t say “You complete idiots, you failed at the task I gave you, so you can´t move on to the next step until you learn to keep your eyes wide open.” 

NO! His response is quite the contrary. He says “Rise, let us go!” in other words, “C´mon, let´s move on to the next thing” WOW! Let´s just take a moment here...in literary terms we´d say a “caesura”.

Instead of dwelling on the failures and incompetence of the disciples, instead of harping on about how they were given a task and failed miserably; He frees them and urges them to move on to the next thing. 

I have had MANY “sleeping” moments - moments where I have appeased my physical and kept my spiritual wants at bay. Even now, I am constantly faced with this issue on a daily basis with my house being a community center and shelter. My spiritual will wants to step-out and make a difference in our corner of the World, yet I daily wrestle with my physical being weak and on other factors such as: finances, selfish ambition, fear, etc.

I allow sleep to fall upon me and appease my physical being yet wake and realise that I have failed my spiritual being and in a sense, feel like I have failed!  But in these moments where I´ve allowed the physical to rule over the spiritual, I hear God´s loving voice, “Arise, let´s go forward (not back)”. And I splash my face with his living waters and move on to the next step.

“Never let the sense of failure corrupt your new action”