Get Up, Sleeper!

"For you used to be darkness; but now, united with the Lord, you are light. Live like children of light, for the fruit of the light is in every kind of goodness, rightness and truth-- try to determine what will please the Lord. Have nothing to do with the deeds produced by darkness, but instead expose them, for it is shameful even to speak of the things these people do in secret. But everything exposed to the light is revealed clearly for what it is, since anything revealed is a light. This is why it says, 'Get up, sleeper! Arise from the dead, and the Messiah will shine on you!' Therefore, pay careful attention to how you conduct your life-- live wisely, not unwisely. Use your time well, for these are evil days. So, don't be foolish, but try to understand what the will of the Lord is." -Ephesians 5:8-17

This is a long passage of Scripture, I know. However, it is a sobering call to live a life of quality. I don't know about you, but sometimes, I forfeit my spiritual sobriety for the sake of laziness or lack of self-control.

Before we started our farm, my husband and I wasted a lot of time. We almost unavoidably disobeyed this Scripture because we didn't have any vision for how our days/evenings/weekends should be spent. God had to put a huge burden like farming into our laps before we began to discipline our time into being more honoring for Him. With our spare time, we would argue. We would indulge our feelings more because we had way too much time to think about them. Our energies were wrapped up in self-evaluation.

Now, our days are forced to be structured because of the nature of what we do. In just the past year alone I've had to mortify my flesh and cry out to God to be my strength more times than I can count. Last summer, I had my last gallbladder attack. The only reason it was my last was because I had it taken out finally. Within one day of surgery, I was back to barn chores and milking my goats. You may say I am crazy, but who else would do it? A few days later, my best milker was in labor with the biggest goat kid I've ever seen and he was STUCK! Try twisting and pulling a slippery baby out of a screaming, flailing momma goat with four incision marks in your abdomen and then you'll understand what it is to want to throw in the towel! That winter, I battled the worst immune crash. I was still in the mode of milking all of my goats and hauling buckets and chucking hay bales, but I had pneumonia so badly that I was supposed to be hospitalized (but I wouldn't let them hospitalize me because who else would take care of things?). "Lord, be my breath!" I cried out. I literally couldn't breathe. After that was a bout with shingles and then another bout of pneumonia. After my immune system began to recover in the month of April, I came down with a severe tooth infection that left me unable to work. "Lord, be my strength!" I cried out. I was literally shaking and falling down in my weakness over my fatigue. I was unable to sleep for six weeks because of the pain. Why was I not going to doctors? Well, I open myself to criticism at this point, because I wanted God to be my healer.

I tell you this tale because I want you to understand that the laws of our Lord are set up to guide us and that God put my farm over me and my husband as a master. As much as we were called to subdue the earth, the earth we are working is subduing us. The greatest remedy for self-absorption is reducing yourself to utter helplessness and allowing yourself to be crushed....and then pressing on. Nothing in me wants to leave the house at midnight when I'm bone-tired and freezing cold to help a prolapsed sheep get her insides back inside again in the dead of winter. Nothing in me wants to go through a hard day of labor and then realize that I have more labor to do before I can rest.

What I'm getting at is this: God will likely put things in your life to HELP you become a supreme manager of time, because the days are short. God will also likely put things in your life to help you become a supreme example of holiness because we have a high calling of holiness since he's invested his best in us. Don't let Him down. Don't blow your opportunities He's giving you by deciding to whine or complain or escape His schoolmaster He's given to help grow and expand you. The psalmist David said: "He has enlarged me in my distress."

O dear, brother/sister: Hear me when I tell you that He will not give you more than you can bear. Be holy. Don't waste YOUR time or GOD'S efforts. Unless the Lord builds the house, he who builds it labors in vain. Get up, sleeper! Please your Lord!

"At the beginning of this night, (he) had admitted an utter helplessness, and that was a terrible thing, like death. Despair, defeat, and death. But see what the dear (Lord) had done to helplessness? (He) consecrated it. (He) turned it into infancy, and that is a hopeful, holy thing, like the beginning of life." -Walter Wangerin,jr. 'The Book of Sorrows'