- We have a 40-hour workweek.
- We have our 2-hour church service.
- We exercise for 4 hours a week.
- We are in some community group 3 hours a week.
- We have broken up our lives into allotments of time and purpose and have become a fragmented people.
Can we live differently?
We work forty hours a week as that is the social norm, and from that, we create a degree of income that gives us a certain lifestyle.
I want to live better.
Not just within my income. But with my time, land, strength, resources, friendships, and especially my family.
As followers of Jesus, we are about the great commission. If our reason for being is to give glory to Jesus, then the great commission is secondary, or even tertiary in our lives. Are you not a father or mother first before you are an Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor, and Teacher, are not our roles as mothers and father eternal in the nature of God, unlike our earthly giftings?
Not to take away from our callings, but to recognize our temporary callings in the light of our eternal nature.
So how do we glorify God and carry out the activities of a disciple?
Have we segmented our lives into hours and activities, and in our fragmentation become less effective in all those segments? How do we live a life without guilt and condemnation that so easily makes a place in the mind of a driven person, even when driven by good visions?
I have often said that God has given us enough hours in every day to do everything that God has for us. This included time to relax, laugh, and blob out.
One of the things I am working on in my own life is to remove the 40-hour mentality from working. Whether for pay or for ministry. I want to remove this time-oriented presupposition from other areas of my life, from religious observance, social observance.
I think that this time of the double bad cold is an opportunity to rewrite our minds.
Many people have been talking about wanting to grow their own food, but our lives and locations do not lend themselves to this. Kamaaina Hale does not want us to have a garden.
And even if I was to have a garden, one that is more than just some herbs and a tomato plant, it would require about an hour a day, during a period of time when I am often being asked to be involved in ministry somewhere, or worse a meeting.
Yet think about what we want to do out there… Africa, Asia, Central & South America. We want to bring the fullness of life, the redemption of the heart, the mind, and the body. Education, business, and government. The arts, occupations, and food.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Train trainers in gardening and you transform communities.Â
Their health improves.
Their social interactions improve.
Their reason for being comes into focus.
And we get opportunities to speak to the whole woman and the whole man.
If this is how we want to carry out the work of our calling in the great commission, why are we not doing this now, modeling this right here in Kona? If we want to become people who can do redemptive works of community development of the soul and the body, we need to be practices of what we preach.