Breathing room means having money left over at the end of the month because you haven t spent it all.

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Laurel Blair
5 years ago
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1 Breathing Room Week 1 Well, welcome back if you ve been away or traveling this summer, and of course, welcome if you re a visitor or newcomer. Speaking of traveling, every once in a while I will visit Manhattan to take in a Broadway play and dinner. I used to enjoy when I was younger the fast pace movement of the city. There was something about it that you just get caught up in. How many times after having dinner and taking in a show I would just walk down Broadway or 8 th Ave. It s quite surprising what your eye would catch that was really interesting. In some cases it was things I had never seen before, or heard before. Dare I say I learned a few things I did not know before? And I ll leave that to your imagination, suffice it to say there was very little left to the imagination there. Manhattan is a place where there seems to be no night or day, no work week or weekend, it just keeps on going and it never stops or slows down, it is always loud and crowded and illuminated. For me I like to lay on the beach in Belmar New Jersey, where a big night out is going Mr. Shrimp for dinner and then for soft ice cream. Anyway, the summer, which looked like such a large expanse from the perspective of Memorial Day, simply disappeared. I hope to get some vacation time in October. That is why I am so excited about our new series. Because I need it. Today we are beginning a new series called Breathing Room. Breathing room is the gap, the margin, the space between our current pace and our limits. Breathing room is just having space to breathe. Breathing room means having money left over at the end of the month because you haven t spent it all. Breathing room means getting to the place you need to be with a little bit of extra time, to collect your thoughts. Breathing room means getting to the end of the day and actually having enough mental and emotional energy to talk and connect with your spouse. Breathing room means getting the rest and sleep you need to meet the challenges of life. Breathing room means not having always to be on or having space between classes or activities so you can enjoy being a teenager. Breathing room is the gap or space between our current pace - our limits. We all have limits. You are a creature and God created you with limits.

2 All things are possible for God. God has no limits, but you do. God created you with limits. You live in a creation of limits. And everything in creation has limits. You only have so many hours in the day. You only have so much money. You have so much energy. At times it is certainly good to stretch ourselves and push our limits. At other times we ought to step out of our comfort zone and do more, go further. And it is fine for us to have days or short seasons when we live at our limits, because an opportunity invites it, or a special project demands it, but we live to long there eventually we crash. And all of us have seen: -the guy who worked so much their marriage fell apart -the couple who lived way beyond their means and spent themselves into deep debt -the parents who pushed their kids so much in sports, or dance, that as adults their children don t even talk to them. -the college student who had way too much fun and failed out. Life is better, people are better, we are better people with breathing room. Here s why: First, when we have breathing room, we enjoy life more and set ourselves up for success. If you think back to the days and times or even seasons of life you enjoyed the most, they probably had plenty of breathing room. Maybe you were working hard and maybe you played hard, but you weren t so busy or so stressed out that you didn t have time to enjoy what you were doing. With breathing room you enjoy what you re doing more and you ll be more successful at what you do which is always more enjoyable. Second, when we have breathing room, relationships can flourish. Relationships require time. When we are constantly living at our limits we feel under pressure, pressure eats time. Lack of time kills relationships. When we have breathing room we can take time for relationships. Third, we are kinder and gentler with breathing room. When we have breathing room, we can take time to actually notice other people, and their needs and their feelings: hold the door open for someone, let somebody go ahead of you, smile. Fourth, we have greater freedom with breathing room. How often do we say we can t do something, something good, something you want to support, because your schedule, your budget, your weekend are at their limits. Living without breathing room enslaves us to what must be done, instead of what should be done, what could be done. Breathing room frees us. Last, and most importantly we position ourselves to be disciples when we have breathing room. Discipleship, becoming students and lifelong learners and followers of Jesus Christ,

3 requires breathing room, as we ll be talking more about in the weeks ahead. Life is better with breathing room. We are better people with breathing room, but here is the reality: No one accidently finds breathing room in our culture. I can attest to this. On Friday afternoon I took what I thought would be an extended lunch break to run three errands. Between traffic on 206 and 70, and lines everywhere, I got back to the office after four. No one accidently finds breathing room. And meanwhile we live in a culture that will constantly push us to our limits. - Advertising constantly bombards us with new and creative ways to spend our money and push past our spending limits. The constant presence of technology and social media begs for us to fill our minds with more and faster and faster and more information. The urge to compete and succeed, the trap of comparisons with our neighbors, the culture of kids sports, the burden of a daily commute, the tyranny of the urgent All contribute to it We live in a culture that pushes out breathing room. If you want breathing room, you ve got to go get it, and carefully guard it. To help us get started we are going to look at a very important discipline that Jesus describes in Luke s Gospel. At this point in the story, Jesus is wildly popular. We read: Now great multitudes accompanied him. Luke Great crowds of people were following Jesus wherever he went. You don t have to be like Jesus or even share his values to like him. The Jesus that is often portrayed in movies and preached in many churches isn t always that attractive, but when you get to know the real Jesus, you will like him. Even if you re nothing like him, you d like him. People who were nothing like him liked him. Not only is he attractive, the crowds are also following Jesus because they think he is going to Jerusalem to overthrow the Romans and become king. So these crowds of people are following him and he turns to them and said, If anyone come to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Luke Wow! It s this kind of passage that is the reason people don t read the Bible.

4 I mean, what does that even mean? Just to explain, in the language and culture Jesus was speaking in, that word hate is an idiomatic expression that meant love less. So he s simply saying to these people who are only following him for selfish self-serving reasons, you can t be my follower unless I am your number one priority. That is the way of discipleship. Eventually, Jesus asks us to put everything behind him. Now if you are new to Church or this is your first time in a long time, that can sound a little intimidating but its not intended as a challenge for you. When people first started following him, he simply said, Come and see. Check out what the whole Christianity is about. And if that s where you are today, you are just checking out the Church, we are glad you are here. But Jesus says to these people who have been following him, these church people, you ve got to step it up. He goes on and says, Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Luke Jesus is just being very honest, he wants the crowd to know, he isn t going to Jerusalem to be made king. He is going to Jerusalem to die on the cross and eventually everyone who follows him will have to make some kind of sacrifice too. There is a cost to discipleship. Now here is the deal, there is a cost to everything. Everything you do or don t do costs you something. It costs you effort to go to work. It costs you money to go to college. It costs you blood, sweet, and tears to raise kids. Your business costs you. Your kids travel soccer costs you. Your sense of fashion costs you. You re undying enthusiasm for the Giants/Eagles costs you. Everything has a cost. One of our problems or struggles when it comes to breathing room is that we forget this very important principle: You have a free evening or a weekend with nothing to do, you could just chill out at home, how often does it get filled up instead: pack the kids up and hit the road again, and all of a sudden what could have been relaxing is filled with stress

5 You get a little extra in your budget, and you go ahead and stretch yourself for that new car, and now you re feeling overextended. You could read a book before falling asleep, but instead you ve just got to check your e- mail one more time, and of course there is something there from work that worries and upsets you and now you can t sleep. We lack breathing room, because we fail to do what Jesus told us we should so. He goes on to say it like this: For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him saying This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Luke Jesus says no one would begin to build a building without the materials and without the financing, without counting the cost of the building because that would be foolish and ultimately unsuccessful. He says that in the same way you wouldn t lightly undertake a building project and count the cost of it, don t do that with your life. Count the cost of your commitments. So over the course of this series, we are going to learn to count the cost. To begin, in the week ahead, try and find a little daily quiet time and think about this question. What are the real cost of your commitments? And where are those costs simply too high for you to support or sustain? Where can your life be better with breathing room?

Matthew 25: Stress Relief: The Gift of Time. Sunday November 2, Rev. Dr. Susan E. Cartmell. The Congregational Church of Needham

Matthew 25: Stress Relief: The Gift of Time. Sunday November 2, Rev. Dr. Susan E. Cartmell. The Congregational Church of Needham Page 1 Matthew 25: 1-13 Stress Relief: The Gift of Time Sunday November 2, 2014 Rev. Dr. Susan E. Cartmell The Congregational Church of Needham This month our sermon theme will be Stewardship. Now a steward