Too Busy: Punishment or Disobedience?

I’m not sure when it happened or even why.  Maybe, it’s just me but, have you noticed how we have completely abandoned any semblance of a sacred calendar?

Our lives no longer revolve around the feasts, festivals and holy-days of faith but dance the beat of business, commerce.  In other words, our calendars declare us to be secular. 

Not all of us. 

Some of us come and go according to the seasons of the earth.  Historically, that’s the definition of pagan. 

Yup, we are for all intents and purposes a secular and pagan people.  Certainly if you look at what governs our calendars.

Now take a quick look at the scriptures.  Anywhere you look in scripture the people of God have allowed the stories, the celebrations, the festivals and feasts which reminded of God’s faithfulness and goodness to dictate the rhythm of their lives.  In other words, faithful calendars have traditionally been governed by faith…

…until now…

Now we “know better”…

When did it become a bad thing for families to adhere to a ritual?  How did we get to the point where regular attendance at the Corporate Gathering of the Body of Christ became optional?   How did we become so holy that we no longer need the regular reminders of a sacred rhythm?  How is it that believers all over the world continue to risk and give their lives for something that we look upon with such disdain? 

Are we really that much more spiritual than believers who are laying their lives down for Jesus?

How is it that pastors and church leaders have become used to… comfortable with… accepting of, believers who attend church once or twice a month?  When did “freedom in Christ” become defined as freedom from obedience?  …freedom from discipleship?  …freedom from commitment?

          True freedom in Christ does not allow you and I to abandon God’s rhythm in our lives…

          True freedom dictates that we follow it…

          In Deuteronomy 5:15 God calls His people to the rhythm of Sabbath because they were free.  “When you were slaves,” God reminds them, “you did not have the choice to Sabbath!  You were slaves to a pagan master and forced to adhere to a pagan rhythm.  Now that you are free… you are free to Sabbath and in ‘Sabbath-ing’ you will remember Who it is that set you free in the first place”

In Deuteronomy 15:15 God reminds His people that generosity is not legalism or bondage… it too the result of freedom.  As is charity (Deuteronomy 24.18, 22). 

Obedience is the privilege of those once bound - now free.

In Jeremiah 16 God declares a coming punishment on as a result of their disobedience.  Through the prophet He declares that without repentance they will be driven from the land of promise and forced to serve a pagan rhythm.   

So I have to ask it…

Is our perpetual busy-ness a mark of our disobedience… or of God’s punishment?

…just sayin’