Our family has plunged into the FFA adventure. That’s Future Farmers of America, for those who aren’t familiar with the term. Mimi is our youngest and at 14 she is taking on the responsibility of raising a lamb. It will only be about a five-month adventure ending with showing the lamb and selling it at the Silver Dollar Fair. It should be a fantastic learning experience for all of us.
My father’s family was farming and ranching just two generations ago, so this feels familiar. We were blessed to live among the orchards near the Sacramento river with our young family for a few years and found the rhythms of agriculture delightful.
Artificial Time Interrupts Nature’s Rhythms
It wasn’t until 1370 that the first public clock was installed in Germany in the square and marking time then changed the world. The rhythm prior to that was going to bed when it got dark and rising when the sun came up. Days were long and full in the summer, and short and slow in the winter. There was a rhythm to the day and even the year. In the words of French medievalist Jacques Le Goff, “Life was dominated by agrarian rhythms, free of haste, careless of exactitude, unconcerned by productivity.”
The clock created artificial time – and we stopped listening to our bodies and started rising when our alarms blared into the darkness. Instead of listening to our body’s needs and rising when we were done resting, we became more machine-like than organic, human and free.
One historian said…
“Here was man’s declaration of independence from the sun, new proof of his mastery over himself and his surroundings. Only later would it be revealed that he had accomplished this mastery by putting himself under the dominion of a machine with imperious demands all its own.”
Until the light bulb in 1879, the average person slept eleven hours a night. Can you imagine that? In America the average is about seven hours of sleep per night. In 1820 about 70% of the entire US labor force were farmers. We were a nation of farmers who understood the rhythms of days, months, seasons; planting, harvesting, and working when there was sunlight – not pushing ourselves to the limit under artificial light. We understood the natural, God created rhythms and were forced to live within them.
Today only 1.5% of the US labor force are farmers. I’m not trying to convince you to become a farmer (although I think we would benefit from more Americans working farms). I want to point out that farmers submit themselves to limits. If Mimi doesn’t feed and care for her lamb it will be weak and possibly die. If my friends don’t water their crops correctly, they won’t have a harvest. There is a correct time to plant rice that will set you up for a good yield on time before the rains. They must yield to the limits of weather, seasons, soil and crops.
Those who are more the product of industrialization do the opposite. They look for any way to get ahead, any corner they can cut, any life-hack or way to cheat the system to get a bigger yield that is cheaper and better. While innovation is a blessing, our pace becomes hurried and our lives disconnected as we lose the health in God's intended rhythms.
Yielding to God's Intended Rhythms
We won’t become an agrarian society again, but we can bring back agrarian principles to our lives that will bring more health. This involves rhythms, ritual, seasons and integration.
John Mark Comer writes,
“Rituals are the habits of meaning that give us an anchor and add depth to our lives. The repeatable practices that come preloaded with sacred imagery and beauty. While we still have rituals in our Western lives, such as weddings and funerals, we have for the most part gotten rid of them or no longer believe in them… As a culture, we’re losing ritual and we are losing rhythm. We’re losing rootedness and depth and anchored-ness. Because time and rhythm and ritual, these things are no longer external forces that we must submit to.”
This Sunday we will talk more about our need for Godly unforced rhythms of grace. Rhythms are directly connected to the habits that we form. As Justin Whitmel Earley says,
“…to fully understand habits you must think of habits as liturgies. A liturgy is a pattern of words or actions repeated regularly as a way of worship… Notice how similar the definition of liturgy is to the definition of habit. They’re both something repeated over and over, which forms you; the only difference is that a liturgy admits that it’s an act of worship.”
Philosopher James K. A. Smith argues in his book You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, the habits we play out day after day are not tangential to our worship but actually central to it.
As you find spaces to experience the spiritual discipline of slowing this week, may you be more and more aware of the habits that are forming the liturgy of your life.
Our Sunday Worship Service begins at 10:00 a.m. in the Dome.
You can also live stream our 10:00 a.m. service on Facebook and YouTube.
If you missed last week's message Unforced Rhythms of Grace #3 - "The Posture of Slowing" click here.
Need encouragement? Text the word Encourage to 530.296.3689 to receive an encouraging scripture or quote from me several times a week that is sent right to your phone.
Leaders and potential leaders: you can also text Lead to 530.296.3689 to receive a thought, quote, or a challenge from me several days a week regarding leadership.
