When Comfort Puts Pressure on Your Faith

There’s a sense of urgency tied up in the word, “harvest.”

When you hear it, you probably think as I do of beautiful foliage, delicious produce, and the cooler temps that come with the impending onset of winter. It’s winter that drives this urgency. Winter equals death for so many things: perennials, birds who don’t fly south, and my supply of vitamin D. But it also spells death for the fruits and vegetables planted many months prior.

Aside from this pressing nature, harvest also connotes hard work. Picking produce, reaping crops, and all its associated tasks are not for the faint of heart. There will be sweat.

Jim Wrigley Photography (CC)

When you combine these two elements the result is anything but comfort. Reaping is stressful, laborious, painstaking, but despite all this the harvest is intrinsically good. It represents months of hard work and the promise of surviving the frost until everything begins growing again in the spring. As such there is nothing to be done in the days of summer and autumn but to work the fields. And yet some have other ideas:

One Compelling Reason to Get More Sleep

I have a love hate relationship with sleep.

I’m an achievement oriented person which means I don’t feel good about myself unless I’m accomplishing things. It’s a sickness, I know, but God is helping me deal with it. That’s one of the reasons Sabbath is so important. (In case you didn’t know, I wrote a book about it.)

Tambako (CC)

Therefore I’m always trying to cram more into the day: just one more chore, one more email, one more blog post. I reached a point where I found myself staying up later and later and getting up earlier and earlier.

But I came to a profound realization that totally changed my outlook on sleep.