EKKO Youth | September 2022
This past fall season, we entered into the Story of Genesis—the narrative by which God hovers over the chaotic waters of the beginning and carefully, intentionally, meaningfully… began to separate and create something new and beautiful out of that chaos. We find that, just as God did that in the beginning with Creation, so too we are invited into that same process: to reshape the chaos and disorder within us to make us into New Creations.
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
To be New Creations is to understand that God has placed a “Cultural Mandate” on all of humanity—to co-create, to imagine, to dream, to build upon the raw materials of what God has created and to know that what we create and build has the potential to last for eternity.
But we’re not just created to be human beings of production. God also invites us to learn how to sabbath: the art of resting, celebrating, and blessing the work we’ve done and to eagerly anticipate the beauty of work done well and intentionally in honor of the God whose first invitation to humanity was to rest on the seventh day.
The Youth participated in the process of creation and the Cultural Mandate by creating, assembling, sanding, painting, and preparing soil for the planting to come. With their bare hands and some raw materials, they too were participating in the Creation process.
As we continue in the Fall Season, I encourage you to begin considering what it means to “co-labor” with God throughout the Genesis narrative. What does it mean for us to not just “work,” but to commit ourselves to work that is meaningful, significant, true, holy, sustainable? What would it look like for us to enter into creation intentionally and to make something that requires work and imagination?
What would our lives look like if work was less of something that was required of us,
And more something that we were invited into—with agency, purpose, and joy?
This type of work and participation will demand not just our time, but our creativity, our imagination. All of who we are.
“Godly rest, particularly in a 24/7 world, is never accidental and can only come when we have gone out of our way to prepare for it.”
And the second question for us would be: what does true sabbath rest look like? More than just sleep—though that is a huge part of what it means to sabbath—but setting aside time with the express purpose of pursuing what is life-giving, what is fulfilling, what is wholesome and holy.
What would our lives look like if rest wasn’t an occasional exercise, made to fit into whatever space we had left in our schedule…
But what if rest—true rest—was something that our schedule was rearranged around?
How would your life look if you prioritized, once a week, the need to settle quietly, to nap, to enjoy slow space, to enjoy unhurried time, good food, a book you love, a walk through nature? And then rearranged everything else around those activities? I imagine our lives would feel much less cluttered. And I would hope that our hearts, souls, and bodies would feel that much more at peace with the challenges facing us in the week ahead. I can’t help but think that that’s what God’s intention was for humanity when the first thing he had humanity do, upon being brought into creation, was to rest.
So as we enter into the next month of the fall season, I invite you to consider practicing these two disciplines: the art of working alongside God with our time and hands, and practice the art of resting with God, with intentional time and space. (You can also try the Breath Prayer that was introduced by Min on the last Sunday, which involves breathing in for four seconds, and then breathing out for six seconds while meditating on a truth about God.)
And together, the People of God say: Amen.