West Main

It’s a crazy and busy world. Modern families have schedules that make one dizzy! Between soccer games, plays, choir practice, studies, football, church and grocery shopping, it’s VERY hard for parents to find any time for themselves. And sadly, it’s often harder to find time to work on our spiritual lives. Sometimes, we really need to force time into our schedules for this. That is why churches often host such events called RETREATS.

They are times to get away from the pressures of the “real world” for a brief period and focus on resting our souls and minds, and listening to God. They are times to laugh and play with friends; times to close our eyes; times to create and strengthen community and family. They’re WONDERFUL events if we will just give ourselves over to them.

It really is important for us to strive to lead balanced lives. This balance MUST include REST. I suspect that many of us justify our own busy lives by making the excuse that Jesus was busy too. But was He as busy in the way we seem to be? Spend some time reading through the gospels, specifically asking yourself the question: How did Jesus spend His time on earth? You will quickly see that Jesus did have a very balanced life. There were times when He was really busy, but those were usually balanced with relaxed times when He walked and talked with His friends or withdrew into the hills to pray. Busy times of work and teaching the crowds and disciples were always balanced with times of solitude, praying, meditating, and renewing His focus on God.

So, I believe it is essential we rest too, and that we RETREAT! For all the amazing accomplishments modern culture boasts, we often forget the simple things. We need to learn to relax and enjoy life. It is good to take a nap, slow down, and look around at the glorious world God has created.

West Main has a Women’s Retreat coming very soon. If anyone deserves a break, it HAS to be the modern day woman! They rarely get time to themselves out of the house that includes interaction with other adults, rather than diapers or homework! It is my sincere prayer that our women will take the time to go and our men will support this effort. We are blessed with some amazing women here, and I am excited to see what God continues to do through them. Jesus understood the need for retreat. Do we?

– Pannell

It’s Not About Me

(Kenneth Tanner)

“We live, in fact, in a society that is so subjective and individualistic in character that it finds itself less and less able to tolerate anything like a church.”     Philip Turner III

Bingo. The origin of our turnoff about church is in us.

The church is first, not something about me. I come to the body of Christ—the people of God yet alive from centuries past, a gathering of all the saints, seated before I was born, that yet continues after I am dead to this world—and it’s just not about me here.

My preferences, my thoughts, my predilections, my biases, my agendas are judged by the body of Christ, regnant, suffering and beautiful. I have no standing to judge her.

Even the particular churches to which we belong—with their hypocrites (like us), hyper-developed and over-elevated doctrines, petty politics, filled with folks that are so, um, different from me—are the arena in which, if I am paying attention, the Spirit is calling me to greater faithfulness, simplicity of confession, humility, prayer and love of others.

This is why I resist our society’s privatization of church—Jesus, me, my Bible; me and my closest friends; me and my family—and insist on the public gathering, where times for the adoration and contemplation of Jesus are posted and made known and where all persons are welcome; that is church and nothing else, however beneficial and good—not concerts where people pay to get in, not dinners out with friends, not your Christian club at school—should be labeled “church.”

C.S. Lewis said he came to understand that he wasn’t fit to fasten the boots of his fellow congregants; that is the realm of mind and heart in which we begin to see and comprehend the inescapable necessity of the church.