Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. Psalm 46:10
This new year is only 12 hours old; a virtual newborn, still all wrinkled and shivering and squinty-eyed – not yet quite ready for prime time.
Yet, surveying my Newsfeed today, and all the blogs and news articles that have been posted and shared and reTweeted, I am beginning to feel, (how do I put this?).
Lame.
Lame, inferior, and entirely sub-par.
Apparently, according to the evidence at hand, I am but a sloth-like shell of a man; a mere mortal, barely treading water in a swirling sea of stunning superheroes.
How can I dispute it, when browsing the headline-grabbing New Year’s Resolutions of those, who only yesterday seemed, well, a lot like me; ordinary, bored, tired, lazy, apathetic?
Yet today, (literally overnight), they unveil their superhuman To-Do lists; of the books they will read, the pounds they will lose, the Bible verses they will study, the places they will visit, the workouts they will do, the businesses they will launch, and the worlds they will save.
I’m exhausted just reading them.
Don’t think I dislike ambition. It’s not that I’m against goals and high standards, and it isn’t that I’m adverse to plans and dreams and God-sized stuff. I’m just beginning to wonder if there isn’t another way; a better path.
You see, yesterday, the people I know and love and live alongside; (those very nice, sweet, regular people), were already drowning in busyness.
They were over-planned and overcommitted and downright manic; adults, spouses, parents, teenagers and kids, all hurried and frantic and running to catch something that always seemed one step out of reach.
And as of just 12 hours ago, all of this activity had left most of them, spent; worn thin from trying to exist for months and months, on a daily cocktail of caffeine, adrenaline and muscle memory.
And today, many of these would-be superheroes, have come to the conclusion that the answer in this new year, the antidote to this Kryptonite sickness of pace, is to do more.
It’s as-if, instead of pausing to rest their bodies and mend their wounds, they’ve simply sewn-up their costumes, refueled the Batmobile, and are now gearing up to take on Gotham’s worst again.
That’s why I love Jesus so much. He was The Superhero; the man of something much greater than steel.
Yes, he could amaze with miraculous feats of power and strength.
Yes, he healed and preached and traveled.
And yet some of the times when I learn the most from Him; when I see Him as most heroic, are those times when he seems to be doing very little of substance; withdrawing to a solitary place to pray, sleeping on a cushion in the back of a boat in a storm, eating a meal with hurting people, hanging out with kids.
Jesus had a superhuman ability to “waste time” and make it sacred.
As much as he had to do, he was never too rushed to see the hurt and need around him, or to neglect his own needs for silence and solitude. Even he, Divinity with skin-on, knew that He needed to spend quality time with his Father.
Maybe there’s a lesson in Jesus’ pauses, for all of us who aspire to greatness; that it isn’t found in how we fill all the spaces of our days, but the open spaces we leave within them. Maybe saving room on our calendars to rest and pray and listen for the the voice of God, is the very thing that will alter us, more than anything we can put in our day-planners.
After the exhausting year that many of us have limped to the end of, the last thing most of us need, is to redouble our efforts to achieve and make and do and change; to jump right into a phone booth and don the cape and spandex, and leap back into battle.
So, to quote the great Stan Lee , “True Believer”, as you plan and commit and dream for the coming year:
Resolve to not allow the things you do to ever define your worth.
Resolve to say no to things that would increase your pace beyond what reflects Jesus’.
Resolve to waste time, doing nothing but listening for the voice of God.
Resolve to trust; that the relationships you nurture will be your greatest achievements.
Resolve to decide that YOU, are not the Hero of this story.
Come back down to earth for a while, take off the costume, and rest… Superman is already making the world spin.
