C.S. Elston

Worshipper, Husband, Author, Screenwriter, Home Cook, Fan

Summer Sabbath — Update

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Technically, autumn (fall) doesn’t start for almost three weeks. But, at least around here, school is starting back up this week and my wife and I are nearly over our “Where did it go?” shock and are starting to settle back into our normal routine that applies to all of the months outside of summer and the Thanksgiving through New Year’s stretch. So, I thought I would post an update to my June 9th “Summer Sabbath” plan.

The idea was to treat this summer as a sabbath season. My thought was that both the Sabbath and summer are already similar in the way that they are meant for rest in the sense of relaxation, connection and renewal. So, I wanted to spend this summer intentionally slowing things down and making it a season of connecting with family and friends, growing closer to the Lord, and recharging my proverbial batteries. I was encouraging others to do the same in the hopes that, by the time autumn rolled around, we would feel more prepared to tackle the rest of life than we had in years and, perhaps, we would decide that a reasonable amount of Sabbath should be part of our lives seven days a week and three hundred sixty-five days a year.

Well, here’s the update. I did spend a lot of time with family and friends this summer and it was wonderful. I also feel like I continued to grow closer to the Lord over the season. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that I failed miserably on the “slow down” portion of my goal. In fact, summer is always a season when my wife and I get a lot of exercise and we barely had time for that. This summer was so packed, so full . . . I guess that’s why we feel like we practically blinked and missed it. It’s nice that it was full of so many lovely things but, I do regret not slowing things down a bit more. Quite a bit more.

Looking back on it, I think one of the main things that crowded the calendar, is that my wife and I both have trouble saying no to things. We need to give ourselves permission to say no even if we don’t have a good excuse. We don’t lie, which makes saying no a little more difficult than it is for some people. If they don’t have an excuse, they just make one up. We won’t do that. But, we need to learn to say no just because it’s the healthy thing to do for us. That’s okay. That’s actually all the excuse we should need.

Maybe next year. In the meantime, practice makes perfect. We’ll try our hand at saying no a little more often. And, as far as the general Sabbath idea, we still have Sundays . . .

What the World Needs Now

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After seeing the title of this post, you’re probably singing “is love, sweet love” in your head. Or, maybe you’re not keeping it inside and you’re belting out the 1965 Jackie DeShannon hit to either the delight or severe dismay of those around you. Perhaps you’re by yourself, in which case I say go ahead and belt it out. I’ve convinced myself that God loves the sound of my voice, even if no one else does. I’m sure the same is true for you.

Love, sweet love is synonymous with how I would finish that sentence with or without the song. After all, God is love. And, we’re not seeing enough love these days, are we? The culture seems to be in a state of chaos. It seems like there’s another school shooting every other week, another terrorist attack just as often, and we’re in danger of adding more wars every day. Yesterday it was with North Korea, the day before that it was Russia, and this morning it’s Syria. Dare I even mention that the current political climate has the United States of America more divided than ever?

So, what is the answer? Border Walls? Gun control? Mental health mandates? How about our spiritual health? Let’s take it back to love. Let’s take it back to the cross. Why? Because I whole-heartedly agree with both William Barclay who said, “Jesus’ coming is the final and unanswerable proof that God cares” and the late, great Billy Graham who said “God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, ‘I love you.’”

I look to the cross and there is nothing that anyone can say or do to make me believe that God does not care about the chaos in our culture or that He does not love me in a very personal and direct way. He’s already proven it.

So, why don’t more people see it that way? Well, quite simply, we’ve pushed him out of our lives. We’ve put ourselves on the throne where He rightfully belongs. We see it all around us every day. Sadly, even often at church. Therefore, I would argue that it is our spiritual health that is in crisis and if we can fix that, everything else will fall into place.

Obviously, we can’t remove sin from the world. The world will be restored but it will be God that does it. Which is all the more reason to look to Him now. We need a revival. We need repentance. We need to make holiness and righteousness our primary goal. We need to put God back on the throne of our lives and, by extension, our culture.

I am convinced that with true, Christian revival would come a drastic reduction in murder, terrorism, war, racism and the indiscriminate shouts of hatred toward others that we see on the news every day and night.

Respect for God means we respect what God respects and love what God loves. God is love and He loves each and every one of us. That means that if we would wholeheartedly turn to God and changed our lives to reflect our love and respect for Him, we would almost automatically love and respect each other. If we respected each other, we would stop breeding hatred and, ultimately, stop killing one another.

In other words, passing all the laws in the world can’t do what turning to God can do. You might say, what the world needs now is Jesus, sweet Jesus. Perhaps now more than ever before.