At this point, it is clear that we all need the Internet. It’s keeping many of our jobs and schools going, as well as keeping us connected to the people we love. Unfortunately, because we all need it, it is really slowing down in some places. Perhaps you aren’t noticing this if you live in a lower-density area, but those of us in apartments and townhouses are really, really feeling the pinch.
Obviously, we can’t just migrate off the internet entirely. In the last two decades, it has become a necessity. But is all of our internet usage equally important? By a complete coincidence, I gave up YouTube for Lent (a 40-day period of selective fasting in many Christian circles) before all of this happened. I thought this was a big sacrifice because I don’t have broadcast television, and YouTube was one of my few sources of continually updating content. It turned out not to be such a sacrifice, though, because getting my entertainment from old-school DVDs is a way less stressful experience than waiting for a video to buffer. I got to thinking more about how our culture has become so hooked on media streaming for all of its entertainment needs. We definitely need the internet for business, school, and long-distance relationships, but in order to free up the bandwidth for those things to be less frustrating, perhaps we need to break our dependence on streaming for entertainment. If all of us cut back at least a little on entertainment streaming, it would make the internet a much less frustrating place for those with legitimate business there right now. Your casual episode of LEGO Masters (one of the few things I’m still streaming) may be costing your neighbor the ability to figure out what’s going on in their zoom meeting for work or class. As Christians in the digital age, we need to be mindful of this impact. This is a great time to dust off all those old CD’s, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, iPods, physical books, board games, card games, crafting supplies, exercise equipment, radios, and if you somehow still have them--VHSs and cassettes. If you love videogames, Google Play has plenty of great offline or lower-bandwidth options available for free or cheap. If you just feel the need to scratch that streaming itch, or if MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) videogames are how you stay in touch with your friends, avoid the peak evening hours of 7-10 pm. Try watching or playing at non-peak times, like early Sunday morning. It may be custom to wind down at the end of the day with these things, but at least to me, there is truly nothing restful about watching the whirling circle of buffering death every 30 seconds. As a special bonus, it improves sleep to cut off screen usage an hour before bedtime. Parents, if you want to make this an especially teachable moment, and you still happen to have such ancient technology on hand, dust off your LPs and show your kids the hardships you had to experience to listen to your favorite music when you were their age. Remind them that you had to make actual phone calls and mail physical letters to your friends so that this generation will understand what a blessing the internet really is. If you really want to impress them with the glories of modern technology and you happen to have a typewriter on hand, have them try reproducing just one paragraph of text on that thing. The point of all of this is that we share the great information highway that is the internet, and like the physical one outside, we need to be mindful of traffic. So be a courteous driver and free up some bandwidth!
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Even consuming the news at the bare minimum rate to stay informed can be discouraging these days. Some headlines deliberately intend to shock, of course, but sometimes the most unnerving ones are the daily updates of facts without commentary of any kind.
The art of evaluating sources of information for their particular slant would fill a blog on its own; after all, that’s half the battle of a college education. It’s a vital issue right now, but the one I would like to address here is: what do we do with the information we get? Obviously, if the information contains carefully-reasoned instructions to help stop the spread of the virus, we follow those instructions. We owe it to the people around us to do everything in our power to avoid overwhelming the medical system with too many patients at once. But what about the information we can’t physically act on? The statistics, the politics, the economy? When I was in high school, some kind adult gave me a magnet for my locker whose sentiment kind of stuck with me: “WORRY BAD, PRAYER GOOD.” Of course, I’ve forgotten about it during some of the years since then, but it comes back to me now as we all find ourselves in worrisome times. I haven’t always been good about practicing the art of prayer. For the sort of person who prefers action and engagement, something as quiet and solitary as prayer can be a hard habit to cultivate. In fact, there was a long dry spell towards the end of the last calendar year in which I felt weird about talking to God at all because, silly me, I thought that was less important than doing the work of the church. Getting back into it was a little awkward at first, but doing it proved necessary and vital. I began to see how so many of those activities I had been so busy doing weren’t that important or at least needed some adjustments. Difficult relationships improved. Miracle of miracles, I survived five weeks of isolation with no breakdowns. All of this feels like it was the preparation for this season, when all we can do about a lot of things is pray, and leave it in the hands of God. Every news story that bothers you is an opportunity to pray. Prayer is not a passive form of self-care like mainstream mindfulness meditation, but a relationship to an all-powerful God who can actually help with the things that you can do nothing about. A part of why so many of us are afraid to pray big prayers about the sorts of things we hear on the news is because we are afraid of not being answered. After all, it is God’s prerogative to do what He wants. Here’s why: It never hurts to ask. If we go into prayer humbly, acknowledging God’s sovereignty and power, we will at least know that we did all we could do about the world’s problems. The exercise of taking those worries and trusting God with them brings peace. I could easily get into a complex discussion of what prayer can and cannot do—many books have been written on the topic—but in its simplest form, it is a relationship. In this season of social distancing, we need that reassurance that there is Someone who is always there and who cares deeply for us, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve last talked to Him. The more comfortable you get talking to God about your own life, the easier it gets to pray about the big things. This isn’t about manipulating events to happen the way you want them to go—that would be sorcery, which the Bible rightfully condemns. This is about the art of showing God that you trust Him to act. For complex theological reasons not worth getting into right now, that act of surrender actually gives Him more room to act, both through you and through others. Go ahead and pray about coronavirus. Pray about the economy. Pray for the protection of the healthcare workers, the grocery store employees, and everyone else in those frontline positions in fighting this thing. Especially pray for those in power to have wisdom beyond their natural abilities—the decisions they make at this point have the ability to save or kill in a number of ways. The more of us who do this, the more room God has to act. If we could get an audience with a human being able to instantly manufacture thousands of N-95 masks and ventilators, we would do it without question. So why not ask our heavenly Father, who knows we need these things? How much more would He be willing to grant them? He works through complex and mysterious ways, often under the guise of very mundane-looking means, but sometimes that begins with a single prayer. Without the usual contours of dressing up, getting in a car, and attending Sabbath school, church, and an array of church-sponsored activities, some people really struggle with how to fill the Sabbath hours. There are many great ways to do this, but I would like to start with something so basic, it almost seems too obvious: get reacquainted with your Bible.
If you have never read this fascinating book in a smooth, comfortable translation, you might be stunned by what’s actually in there—as well as what isn’t. If the only way you’ve experienced the Bible has been through sermons, prepared Bible studies, children’s movies, and devotional or even theological books, chances are that you’ve never been exposed to some of the most delightfully fascinating and bizarre stuff in there. In the process of adapting the thing for general audiences that usually include young children, by necessity some of the most interesting things in the Bible never make it into anyone’s sermons. When I started reading the Bible on my own around 4th grade in a translation I actually understood, I was kind of shocked by how much truly fascinating stuff was in there that no one had ever told me about. This began a life-long love affair with the Bible as written, with all of its messy gray areas and weird stories that spare no punches in talking about the faults of any of the supposed Bible “heroes.” A part of why so many people give up on reading the Bible after Genesis is that the law books really are heavy reading, and kind of act as a barrier between the incredible stories of the Exodus and the truly wild stuff in Judges and beyond. Maddeningly enough, frequently really interesting stories in, say, Numbers or Chronicles are bookended by boring lists that make people give up. For my money, the most interesting parts of Paul’s letters are tucked in between paragraphs of heavy theology that all the guys I went to school with nerd out over for some reason but I have to work to care about. So let me set you free just a little: start someplace interesting and feel free to skim when you hit something dull. Reading the Bible for pleasure is different than reading it for study—a worthwhile pursuit that I do a lot of, but one that can bog people down from the simple joy of just experiencing the Bible as a book. The first books I read in their entirety (during a boring sermon, ironically enough) were Ruth and Esther because they’re short and digestible, with a surprising amount of fun. The book of Esther is downright delightful to read out loud, and if you’ve never experienced it that way, it’s worth the 45 minutes with your family to do it properly. The Bible was originally written to be listened to, rather than read silently. In the centuries before widespread literacy, the vast majority of people heard the Bible read aloud and rarely had access to physical copies of the books themselves. Anyone with that kind of treasure was expected to share it by reading it out loud for the community. The beauty of this is that it makes the Bible fabulous fodder for the audiobook format that has become more accessible in recent years. Two of my favorites are the Dramatized NIV and the Word of Promise NKJV, which has sound effects and celebrities reading the different characters. There’s nothing quite like hearing the part of King Saul read by what I think is John Rhys-Davies. Undoubtedly, some parts of the Bible are easier to digest than others, and I would not recommend that anyone start in, say, Ezekiel. (After years of theological training, I still don’t understand at least half of what’s in there.) But for someone just starting to read the Bible on their own, the four gospels at the start of the New Testament are really fun, as are 1-2 Samuel because they’re all story and a bit lighter on the dense stuff that makes some of the rest of the Bible so hard. The point of the exercise is not to read the Bible for information, though there’s plenty of it in there, or even to deliberately search for devotional or moral tidbits, but to take pleasure in this incredible, bizarre, and wonderful masterpiece that has somehow survived millennia of wars, persecutions, plagues, and even the most dangerous threat of all: ease. The ease with which we can access the Bible makes it all too easy to take for granted. It’s easy to forget that so many people have given their lives so that we can enjoy that privilege. Let’s not waste their sacrifice, but celebrate it by drinking deeply of the riches they have preserved for us. When I first drew up a list of topics for this blog, I never imagined how crazy the grocery store situation would get—and remain. Even so, diet was always going to be a post at some point. Why? Because there are bizarre things that can happen to the appetite when ordinary structures are taken away regardless of what’s going on outside.
Most importantly, stress affects the appetite in some fairly vital ways. Depending on the situation, stress can either make your appetite vanish or cause rounds of unhealthy binge eating. To my enduring irritation, people talk about stress eating a good deal, but not the vanishing appetite. I don’t want to minimize the very real struggle of stress eating, but its fixes are actually simpler than the vanishing appetite. Either A) don’t keep bad stuff in the house to begin with or B) exercise more. In regards to A, binge-eating carrots will not hurt you as much as binge-eating potato chips. Eventually, you will lose the will to keep gnawing. If you know certain foods tempt you, just don’t keep them around. I know I cannot be trusted with a jar of Nutella, so I don’t buy it. As for B, the exercise not only burns off excess calories, but actually suppresses appetite up to a certain point. (Obviously, if you overdo it, you’re going to end up wanting to eat the world. Everything in moderation here.) People who lose their appetite under stress are in a much bigger bind, because not eating leads to more stress, which makes it even harder to eat. Eventually, they hit the proverbial wall and get locked into a vicious cycle of needing to eat, but not having the energy to do so because energy comes from food. Weirdly enough, the hunger can be there even as the body lacks the energy to deal with it, and it is truly terrifying. There are two helps to this dilemma, one preventative and the other to get unstuck. To prevent getting into this situation in the first place, be proactive about eating. Think ahead and constantly have healthy snacks like fresh fruit or nuts at hand so that your body doesn’t have a chance to freak out in the first place. Set an alarm reminding yourself to eat at proper intervals whether you feel like it or not. With the social cues of regular workplaces with regular work hours gone, this could be vital for maintaining a sense of structure that isn’t just good for the appetite, but for well-being in general. If, Heaven forbid, you find yourself in that situation of being desperately hungry and no will to eat, take advantage of the bizarre phenomenon of mirror neurons. As advertisers know, our brains are hard-wired to mimic what they see, especially when the action portrayed is eating. This is why you feel hungry when you see people eating on TV, and why people tend to eat more with others than alone. The thing I hate most about this is that it makes me crave stuff I don’t normally go out of my way for, like Doritos. I don't even like Doritos very much, but watching characters on a TV show eat them makes my body want them. If you cannot get your body to eat, use this brain hack for good instead of the usual evil and sit yourself down next to either someone else in your household who is eating or, if you’re alone, footage of someone else eating. It may not give you the will to eat an entire meal, but it can help you get down enough calories to keep going. Most of the time, mirror neurons get us to eat more than we should, but when the appetite is gone, they can be a real help. I’ve been spending way more time on social media than normal lately, both because of the need to publish things like this blog for work and to stay aware of what’s going on with the people I love. It’s a great tool and one of the great marvels of the last two decades. In these strange times, it’s no wonder that people are flocking to it in greater numbers than usual.
The hour each morning that I spend flicking through it these days, though, just isn’t as satisfying as a video call of the same length to my parents. Or even a shorter phone call to my great grandmother, who I can only reach by mail or phone. Social media does a great job at cultivating a large number of relationships at once, but in these days where we cannot see our loved ones face-to-face, what many of us crave is a deeper connection. One thing I discovered while living in Spain for a school year was that you love a city differently when you take time to live in it than you do if you breeze through in four days. My four days in Paris were fabulous, but I did not fall in love with that city quite like I did Valencia or even the small village of Sagunto, where my school was located. Paris was cool, but I actually get a little emotional thinking about Sagunto and Valencia, the relationships formed there, and the good memories made there. Relationships with people are like that. They grow deeper through more focused attention and time. Social media is like the four-day Paris run, but slower, more individualized forms of communication do better at scratching that itch of loneliness tugging at people these days. It’s impossible to give that kind of loving attention to everyone you know, of course. I could not maintain the same depth of relationship with all my church members at once even if I tried. But taking the time to do that with even a few people can go a long way towards a more connected world. When was the last time you hand wrote a letter? There’s something special about receiving a handwritten note, even if it’s from someone who could text you the exact same words or say them to you aloud. Knowing that the other person took the time to sit down, get out a pen, and form those letters can make a person feel. . . loved in a way that receiving a text that says the same thing doesn’t. Even if it doesn’t involve putting pen to paper, I would like to challenge you to try slower forms of communication on a few people whose face-to-face company you miss. It won’t be the same as being physically present, but it’s still more intimate than a passing glance on social media or giving up altogether. Deep relationships are what make us human; they’re what we’re hardwired to do. Let’s not give up on that just because it’s gotten more difficult, but lean into it further in light of the times. “Only boring people get bored!” Ever hear that? It’s usually in the mouth of an adult trying to deal with some child whining about how whatever’s going on is really too dull for them. As cruise ship companies and the military can tell you, though, boredom is a real threat that grown adults need to deal with productively to stay out of mischief.
If you’ve ever been on a cruise, you may have noticed that the days the ship is “At Sea” (as in, no land in sight) are the most heavily packed with activities. Cruise lines tend to schedule their formal nights on these days, and sometimes their most elaborate shows. When the ship is docked in port? Forget it. Nothing’s happening on that ship because everyone wants out to see the new town outside their windows. We are collectively in an even smaller version of a cruise ship right now, and with that comes the same need to be proactive about staving off boredom. Of course, work and school keep most of us occupied for a large portion of the day, but especially on the weekends, we find ourselves with an awful lot of extra time on our hands. Of course, the easy thing to do is to hunker down in front of the TV or play hours of a video game, and hey, I won’t judge anyone for doing more of that than usual. There just comes a point where your eyes feel like they’re about to dry out of their sockets from staring at screens too long and you find yourself craving something less virtual to do. I also don’t know if anyone else out there shares this with me, but whenever I play video games for a longish period of time, even under the current conditions, some small part of my soul cries out at the amount of mental energy that went into an ultimately useless task. It’s kind of an existential thing: “Is this the best I can do with my precious time on earth?” If anyone else out there is feeling a little numb from media overload right now, I’d like to suggest that now is a great time to indulge in a creative hobby. By this, I mean an activity that generates something more lasting than just the escape of entertainment. Entertainment isn’t bad per se, but to get through this thing, we’re all going to need a reason to wake up in the morning other than just to fill the time. Right now, someone next door to me is practicing the piano, and I applaud that. My own father largely became the pianist he is today because in the pre-Internet days without TV at home, there were only so many ways to spend one’s time during a Wisconsin winter. The person next door to me, who I am fairly certain is not a professional musician, will come out of this thing having mastered a piece or two to play for their friends. Two nights ago, I dusted off a crochet pattern my mother-in-law gave me months ago. I spent two hours laying down two rows that I may have to pull out because I’m not sure I did the base chain right. If I keep at it for however long this situation lasts, by the end I will have a beautiful afghan that sort of looks like an American flag. Bonus: the tactile experience of working with the yarn is helping a little with the lack of touch opportunities—the hugs and handshakes we all miss so much. Several of my friends are in to painting miniatures. This is painstaking, detailed work that I don’t have the patience for. I love seeing their finished products, though: incredibly intricate armies of tiny figurines that they use to re-enact historical battles or pitch against others who do the same thing. Those battles will have to wait, but I’m sure several of these guys will have truly magnificent ranks of little soldiers before this is done. For those who didn’t have a creative hobby of any kind before this all started, this will be a little tricky because many of these hobbies require materials. Even baking, the mainstay of bored people the world over seeking comfort, has its challenges: eggs are getting hard to find. (You can substitute ¼ cup applesauce for one egg in most baking applications if it doesn’t matter that the thing be able to rise. Cupcake people: if you know a way around that issue, I’d love to hear it.) This is a great time to learn how to cook from scratch from fresh ingredients, though, not just because of the extra time but because higher levels of cooking skill will allow you to make more of what you can find at the grocery store. One hobby that doesn’t require much to start is coloring. Everything you would need to get started on that and even on actual painting can be found at Dollar Tree, which is still open because they sell food. If you can get your hands on some Legos, this is a great time to experiment with more complicated building techniques. Most people I know have at least one jigsaw puzzle collecting dust in a closet, and this is a great time to give it some exercise. This is a great time for people who used to write a lot to dust off their ideas for novels, short stories, and poetry to take another crack at them. All the materials necessary for writing are already at home for everyone who’s telecommuting anyway. I leave this one for last because the last thing anyone who’s truly tired of screen time wants is to spend even more time in front of a screen. If writing was once your passion, though, this is the time to reclaim it. Even if your stuff is terrible, this is a great moment to practice your craft. Whatever you find to do, make it something that will make you feel proud of the time you spent on it. Even if it’s just for you. And if you happen to make something that looks or sounds good enough that you don’t mind sharing it? Please post it on social media. We could all use the distraction. Most of what I’ve written so far has been about using the changes that the times are forcing on us to re-evaluate how we live life. I still stand by that. Today, though, I would like to temper that by making a case that any shred of normal you can keep during all of this will do you some good.
Every January, people make ambitious New Year’s resolutions. Some of them create lasting change, but many don’t. What makes the difference, I think, is whether the person realistically considered the issue I affectionately refer to as “change fatigue.” Change fatigue is when your willpower crumbles because you tried to change too much at once. All of a sudden, your noble goals for fitness, devotional life, or reading or whatever, go down the drain because you tried to do too much too fast and you find yourself with even worse habits than the ones you started with. In these tough times, so much change is being forced on all of us at once that all of us are experiencing a degree of change fatigue. To counterbalance this, you need shreds of normal. For example, I have a silly custom of using every St. Patrick’s Day as an excuse to eat Lucky Charms. They remind me of my grandma, who has beautiful red hair and would always get some for me every time I would visit her house when I was little. I considered skipping it this year because of the lines at the grocery store, but even though I had to wait in line to get it, I found the presence of that brightly-colored box of children’s cereal in my home last week incredibly comforting. Anything that helps you retain a sense of normal that doesn’t break the social distancing rules, for my money, is worth doing at this point. You need all of your change-coping skills just to get past the weirdness of this season. Anything comforting and familiar will help give you the strength and willpower to make wise decisions as you go about your life. I’m glad I have cats at home, because for them, nothing has changed except how much I’m home—and they don’t care. The simple rituals of feeding them, wrestling with them when they try to steal food, and casually scratching them behind the ears when they sit near me have a wonderful way of reminding me that some stuff doesn’t change no matter how weird the world is getting. Doing these things feels normal, and normal is very comforting right now. Whatever helps you feel normal right now, do it. Free up the energy to cope with everything else. It will look different for everyone, but find something that works for you. Even if it’s something that seems otherwise pointless, like putting on business attire to work from home, don’t let anyone judge you for it if it helps you. One woman in my social media network was mourning the lack of opportunity to wear her heels these days; if wearing heels around the house is comforting to you, it’s worth doing. Just don’t throw your back out. Last weekend, one of my youth asked, “How long is this going to last?” and I had nothing better to say than, “We actually don’t know for sure.” My church’s face-to-face meetings have been suspended through the end of March, and that’s nice and clear, but what about April and May? Without a clear time frame for how long this altered state of affairs will last, those of us with jobs that involve planning weeks ahead can become deeply frustrated by the new complexity of this challenge.
Should we give up on planning altogether and just live week to week? The idea has its merits in the simplicity department, but some things demand advance planning no matter what. Quality takes time, effort, and intentionality. Going from emergency to emergency may keep fires at bay, but it doesn’t lead to a deliberate destination. This is where the art of contingency planning comes in. In other words, it is always wise, even without the heaping measures of uncertainty we are experiencing right now, to consider realistic worst-case scenarios when planning events and have a back-up plan to deal with them. The easiest back-up plan in one’s bag of tricks, of course, is to cancel. For a lot of things, this is the best option. Weird situations like the one our world is in right now have a wonderful way of revealing just how many trivialities lurk on a given calendar. In the ordinary course of events, it is remarkably easy to throw a lot of time, energy, and even money at certain things that demand our attention more from habit than actual purpose. Also, sometimes things that are ordinarily quite important still need to be cancelled to preserve resources to deal with the emergency that caused the cancellation. The other easy back-up plan is to postpone it. This makes the most sense when there’s a clear notion of when the event can happen again. Alternatively, postpone so conservatively that it feels absurd that things could possibly still be like this—one event I was registered for that was supposed to happen this June has been postponed to 2022. In general, the more conservative the plans are, the less danger the plans are in. It’s easier to go through with things that involve few people and few resources than large events that involve large numbers of people and a good deal of money. That brings me to the principle of downscaling. If, God forbid, your wedding date falls in one of the disputed months, I might recommend cancelling or postponing the wedding celebration, but not the actual wedding. It only takes five people to do a legally binding ceremony, and there’s no good reason not to go the simple route when the only other option is to postpone. If, God forbid, an immediate family member dies during this thing, a large in-person memorial service is a bad idea, but an intimate immediate family graveside service can go a long way towards bringing comfort to those closest to the deceased. In less drastic situations than weddings and funerals, downscaling can mean honoring the spirit of planned trips to see family by firing up the phone lines instead. It can mean having tea with a friend in front of a camera instead of at a coffee shop. It can mean games and movies at home instead of going to an amusement park or movie theater. Thinking of alternative ways to do things can be a fun thought exercise. One of the weirdest hobbies I had in middle school was to look around my school gym during lunch time and try to think of interesting ways to use the space for concerts and plays. I didn’t do this because my father was the music teacher and occasionally found my ideas helpful, but because the exercise of doing it amused me in the same way that others find crosswords and su doku amusing. I loved event planning as a hobby growing up (and now as a part of my job) because there’s this rush when things click into place that’s even more satisfying than filling in the last number of the su doku, the last letter of the crossword, or even—and this is saying something—the last piece of an actual physical puzzle. Making enormous changes in plans on the fly can be a real pain, but just like su doku and crosswords, your ability to plan quickly and make adaptations on the fly can be built over time. The more you practice, the faster it will come to you. Whether you cancel, postpone, or downscale around everything that’s happening, learning to think adaptively about planning now will make you all the sharper about it when the restrictions lift. Last night I was on a zoom meeting with colleagues when the governor of CA issued a stay-at-home order. After a brief call to my senior pastor to process how this information affects our work, I decided not to upload my post for yesterday because the last thing I needed before trying to sleep was everyone’s misinformed panic over the order. That post will go up on Sunday.
I bring this up because the Sabbath begins at sundown tonight, and it matters more than ever. The Hebrew word for Sabbath, shabbat, literally means “to cease.” Just like I forced myself to cease exposing myself to the panic over the governor’s order, all of us need the ability to press pause for a day to give our minds, hearts, and bodies a break. One of the most frustrating things to read on Facebook when the SDA churches in my area decided to suspend face-to-face services was the statement that we were keeping people from honoring the Sabbath. This revealed to me that as pastors, we have done a very poor job of explaining the Sabbath in the past or even bent what the Bible says about it to suit our own traditions and purposes. Of course, I shouldn’t be too hard on my fellow pastors; people are good at not paying attention to the plain meaning of the Bible just looking at it on their own. So, here’s a quick review of what the Sabbath commandment, as written in stone on Mt. Sinai, actually says: “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the LORD your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11, NLT.) The actual commandment does not require face-to-face gatherings. They sprung up as a custom, first in Judaism and then in Christianity because a rest day from secular work is a convenient time to have them and because seeing the people we love does good for the soul. On the other hand, the commandment does require that we remember the Sabbath and set aside the things we work at the rest of the week. Intricate discussions in both Judaism and Sabbath-keeping Christianity revolve around what constitutes “work,” but the general principle is that the Sabbath should be different from the rest of the week. It should not pass by without notice. Remembering to observe the Sabbath is about more than going to church; it’s about shelving the persistent worries of the rest of the week to remember that there is a God in Heaven who is more powerful than those concerns. It’s about trusting that when the sun goes down on Saturday night, the world will still be there even if you are not personally trying to hold it together. It’s about taking a day to think about God’s goodness, to admire the intricacy of His creation, and to reconnect with Him after not having as much time to devote to doing so the rest of the week. Every Friday between now and the end of this stay-at-home order, I’ll be writing about ways to enjoy the Sabbath at home, but foundationally, it’s about rest and remembering God. We miss our comforting rituals, but I do believe that God intentionally left them out of the Sabbath commandment so that no matter what happens, we can take the Sabbath with us. May your family enjoy a blessing this Sabbath day, no matter what is happening outside. Exercise’s best press agents may be weight loss and muscle building, but those aren’t the best things it does (nice when it happens, though.) For those of us trapped indoors with a good deal of stress, exercise has wonderful mental health benefits that are far more crucial right now.
Stress floods the body with cortisol, adrenaline, and a couple of other chemicals that are great for running away from danger, but not great for thinking clearly or for keeping one’s immune system in good shape. Exercise burns off these chemicals and produces endorphins that even lift your mood naturally. Some people even call it “Nature’s Antidepressant.”* So how do you exercise without going to the gym? If the weather is good and the rules don’t get much stricter, outdoor activities like walking, running, biking, skating, and skateboarding are great. Those have the bonus of exposing you to fresh air and sunlight, both of which are great for both body and mind. You get to remind yourself that the world outside your door is more than the stressful things you hear on the news: flowers still bloom, grass still grows, small dogs still look adorably silly, and nice people still wave from a distance if you happen to see each other. But let’s say the weather gets bad again or that the rules tighten down further: how do you stay active without leaving the house? I have a really dumb suggestion that has actually worked really well for me: pace. Pace across your living room. Pace down the hall. Pace anywhere you can walk a few steps and turn around. Pace while talking on the phone. Pace while listening to music or audiobooks. Pace a little every hour or two if your job is sedentary. It may seem like a small, silly thing to do, but if you stick to it, you will feel the difference. Because most of us live with other people, you may need to get creative about the use of common areas for this. You may have to have conversations about who gets to do what when. Doing jumping jacks upstairs from someone trying to work or study is downright rude, and nothing drove me nuts in Seminary like whoever was bouncing a basketball upstairs from me all the time. However, the people you live with can be great exercise partners, too: if you’re married, when was the last time you danced with your spouse at home? If you have young children, carrying them is great strength training, and playful rough housing can be great cardio. Speaking of kids: they need exercise, too. In fact, they probably need more of it than adults do to function. Those of you who have them have probably already figured this out, to put it mildly. Whether it’s a good time or place for it, generally they will get up and move. A lot. Why fight it? Instead, build it into the day and make it as fun as possible. Let them take regular breaks for physical activity and play, and make clear rules for them to follow to do it safely. Sure, you don’t want them to put someone’s eye out by playing tag inside a small apartment. You can still encourage lower speed, less destructive forms of physical activity like building pillow forts, playing pretend, and learning how to cook. For all ages, doing household chores can be a great, productive form of exercise. Also, all ages can be resistant to doing household chores. To get over that reluctance, combine the chores with something pleasurable, like listening to music or catching up with a loved one over speakerphone. Another fun option is to make household chores into a game where different tasks are different points and whoever gets the most points, wins. There are a few apps available that make it fun and easy to “gamify” household chores. Whatever you do, stay active! Your body and mind will thank you for it. *(If you take prescribed antidepressants, do not stop without consulting your doctor first. Even if you can manage your symptoms with exercise, tapering off of medication is a delicate business that has to be regulated by a professional rather than done cold turkey.) |
AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
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