Intentionality and the Summer Break

by Rev. Jim HollandFood is a passion of mine, so much so that after about five years of indulging it, I have been on a diet for the past three and a half months and lost most of the remnants of said passion. Nevertheless, I love food—I love to grow it, pick it, preserve it, cook it, share it and eat it. I have been chastened for this passion by well meaning Christians who think “spirituality” means an abandonment of the physical world. However, I simply point to Jesus and the fact that during his earthly ministry, he is nearly always going to, coming from, or in the middle of a feast. That should be enough justification; as Chesterton said, “we can’t be more spiritual than God.” I also look at the Kingdom of God and realize that the end game of Jesus’ coming was to restore this world to an Edenic state, where feasting and physical enjoyment are the stuff of everyday life.The problem with food is just that it is such a good thing. God gave us taste buds and the craft to take something that can be merely sustenance and turn it into a banquet, a party, or a place that centers a community. But like most good things, the very thing God has given us to delight us can kill us. The various and sundry sicknesses and diseases one can get from an excess of food are too numerous to mention. At any rate, what this means for me is that I have to change my lifestyle and the way I think about food. So for the last few months I have been on a diet, or new way of eating. It has worked for me, just as five years ago, Weight Watchers worked for me and I lost a lot of weight. I think diets are a lot like budgets; most any of them will work, if you work them.I say all this because the one thing I know about weight loss is that you have to be intentional; it has to be a priority. One does not casually say, “I am going to go on a diet,” or more realistically, “I am going to change my lifestyle,” and there be no consequences from that decision. Dieting, like other things, involved a proper ordering of the desires. A diet always involves a battle of conflicting desires—a love for food and a longing for better health. To face this severe conflict, one has to be very intentional, make a lot of new choices, and not default back into an old eating pattern every time delicious fare is laid in front of your face.I have been pondering this whole idea of “intentionality” as we get deeper into the whole subject of the “Kingdom of God,” of which we are a part if we are a follower of Jesus. I know that to be a follower of Jesus is a gift God gives us; we can’t even see the kingdom of God unless we are “born again.” Yes, I know all that. But to be a follower of Jesus, while a radically spiritual venture, is also a very tangible reality. Jesus’ directives to his disciples are, in fact, so counter-culture and counter-intuitive that if we don’t intentionally think them out and plan them out, we will just default into the prevailing winds of the cultural, or the flesh, or both.I was thinking about this as it pertains to summer. Summer is a different rhythm, but it doesn’t mean we get a two-month break from being citizens of God’s Kingdom. In suburbia, summer gives us a break from a more rigid schedule of carting children to and from school and all their various lessons and activities five days a week. It is easy to be so exhausted that you do, in practice, take a two-month break from being a citizen in the Kingdom.So here’s what I’m driving at when I use the word “intentional:” how is the summer more than just a break from the grind of school life? How can you, given that you do have a more relaxed schedule and more free time, use that to advance the kingdom of God? I think that is a fair question. How do you use this different rhythm of life to cultivate more discipleship, more community, more love for Jesus, or more interaction with your neighbor?Well, you will have to be intentional. Most of our summers are broken up into a few weeks of travel, weekends away, or visiting family. These are good things; we need breaks away from the mundane. But in the end, the mundane is where we live, where redemption happens, and where all true change will actually take place. Most of us focus so much on these breaks that everything else in the summer is either anticipation before the event, or letdown after it is over. How can we change this, how can we redeem the summer? Well, if it happens, it will be because your family has conversations about it, and just as much as you mark your calendar for times of retreat and getaway, you will have to mark out times to engage your neighbors, new friends or whatever expression being a citizen of the God’s Kingdom means to your family in your particular place and circle of influence.Teri and I have started this conversation, but here is what I know: good intentions are not the same as being intentional. Until our intentions are on the calendar, they are just wishful thinking. We are too busy getting ready for this, or coming back from that, to think about all the time we potentially have if we do not start saying to ourselves, and as a family, right now, “this is how we plan to participate in and see God’s kingdom come in our small place in a tangible manner.”Is this hard? I think that is the wrong question. It is hard if serving people is considered hard. It is hard if it means laying down your life to feed and serve people rather than watch TV. It is hard it you don’t like messiness, because the kingdom of God is always about making better disciples or more disciples, and that is an inherently messy process. No, the real question is, “Is this what Jesus would do?” And then we plead for faith to believe that what Jesus promises always brings about something we can’t plan for or predict—joy!