Work and Rest

I love snow. I love how pristine it looks when it covers the earth untouched. I love how it turns my world into Narnia (because who doesn't want to go to Narnia?). I love how it makes me pause and think, mostly because it generally stops everything else going on in my life when it happens. 40-50 inches of snow? It's pretty awesome, let me tell you.

I do not like missing more than a week of work.

We have been studying both Sabbath and work at Kairos since the fall. We learned first about how God rests, and commands rest, so that we can renew ourselves and take the time to grow in Him and listen to what He is telling us. We learned second about how we were created to do work, both for ourselves and for God. Ultimately, all of our work is for God's glory and a part of His purposes in us and for us. Adam and Eve were given work in Genesis 1-2, before the fall. Work is not a consequence of sin, rather, it is a gift to give us purpose and life. Sin just makes work harder.

It is funny to me that as soon as I finished learning all of this about rest and about work, I was forced by nature (and God, really, as He controls nature) to take more than a week of vacation. Yes, it has been great to catch up on things that I had been neglecting, it has been great to get some really good rest, and I've had some awesome conversations and revelations these past few weeks, but I will be very glad to go back to work tomorrow.

I understand now why we were created to do something and why work is a gift. We were not meant to sit around aimlessly. Roundabout Wednesday and Thursday my housemates and I started to get very antsy. God gives us work to do that mirrors His work and ultimately uses that work to draw us to Himself and help us grow. Of course, He also uses rest to draw us to Himself, and it is equally as important. I think that I needed this time to really recharge and listen to Him, and I'm looking forward to what He's going to do with that.

Right now, though, I'm just looking forward to talking about the 1920s with my 7th graders and the judicial branch with my 8th graders!

Coming back to life

I'm not big on new year resolutions. Yes, it is good to have goals, and yes, another trip around the sun could be a good time to start them, but I think that the best time to start something is generally as soon as possible, unless there is a really good reason to wait. I do like to make a general outline of things I'd like to do in the next year. For example, last year I decided that I wanted to start learning how to cook different kinds of food and I wanted to start exercising regularly, two goals that I certainly met this year.

Blogging, however, was not high on my priority list. Obviously. This will change in the next year, I hope. I'm not going to call it a resolution because I want to give myself wiggle room, but I am going to try to blog about something at least once a week. There will be some similar postings as I have done in the past, but also some very different ones as I am no longer a student and I have my own house and some new hobbies now.

2009 changes:

• Graduated from graduate school in May!
• Started work as a middle school teacher in September
• I teach American history to 7th graders and Civics/Economics to 8th graders ... very different from the whole teaching world history life plan
• Moved back to Northern Virginia
• Attending "adult" church, and some "young adult" church
• Living in a new HOUSE with four other girls
• Picked up running as a hobby

Topics that will stay consistent:

• Writing/fan fiction (still have to finish "Heart of Gold" anyway!)
• Worship drabbles
• Public schooling thoughts
• General state of the world drabbles
• General Christianity drabbles

We'll see if this happens. :) Like I said, not a resolution, but certainly an intention. Here's to 2010!