Of Desolate Places and Dinner by Candlelight
The Epoch Times reports:
After a trip to Norway, a missionary family of six took on a new tradition of eating dinner by candlelight and noticed some amazing changes. ...
The family has lived “all over the place” owing to mission work including Norway, in 2017, where they came face to face with a different take on family dinnertime.
“That is actually the first place we saw that people use candles a lot for dinner,” Mrs. Coats told The Epoch Times. “I don’t think it’s the tradition ... from what we’ve gathered, I think it’s their lifestyle.”
Since they began, Mrs. Coats has noticed some interesting changes in her kids and their family dining dynamic.
“[W]e turn lights off, and it’s calm, and they‘ll sit and talk. They will sit longer because I feel all the distractions go away,” she said.
Mrs. Coats believes there is “an attack on the family unit” and a distraction epidemic in the United States.
“We’re distracted with our phones, we’re distracted with our TVs ... and it’s eating up time that we could be face-to-face with people,” she said. “I would say, even if you’re not with your family, or maybe you don’t have an immediate family, just get out of your comfort zone and find people.”
What a great idea! One worthy of every family to give it a try. Pulling aside to rest, refresh, and connect on a deeper level is a very biblical concept. Consider these words from Scripture:
"And he said to them, 'Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.' For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat" (Mark 6:31, ESV).
While this verse is in no way "directly" addressing family meal time, it is nonetheless addressing priciples that might prove helpful as we consider our own families' busy, "distracted" lifestyles.
Context:
The disciples had just returned from a mission where they preached, healed, and cast out demons. They were tired and had been so busy that they hadn't had time to even eat.
Rest is Necessary:
Jesus acknowledges their need for rest (and eat!), recognizing it as essential for both their physical and spiritual well-being.
Rest and Ministry:
While rest is important, it's not meant to be a permanent end to ministry. Jesus is not telling them to abandon their ministry work, but rather to take a break to refresh themselves before continuing.
Desolate Place:
The "desolate place" suggests a quiet and secluded location where they can be free from distractions and find peace.
Purpose of Rest:
The purpose of rest is to restore their physical strength, allow for spiritual reflection, and prepare them for the continued ministry that awaits.
As we examine and recognize the craziness of our own lives, we would do well to look to Jesus' and the disciples' examples of pulling away to an undistracted place to quiet ourselves and feed both our bodies and spirits. In this way, we can join the Coats family in fighting “[the] attack on the family unit” and "distraction epidemic in the United States."
So go ahead ... Turn out the lights, and turn on family rest and rejuvination!
"And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise" (Deuteronomy 6:6-7, ESV).
Be Still To Hear
In his book Directions, author James Hamilton shares this insight about listening to God:
Before refrigerators, people used icehouses to preserve their food. Icehouses had thick walls, no windows and a tightly fitted door. In winter, when streams and lakes were frozen, large blocks of ice were cut, hauled to the icehouses and covered with sawdust. Often the ice would last well into the summer.
One man lost a valuable watch while working in an icehouse. He searched diligently for it, carefully raking through the sawdust, but didn't find it. His fellow workers also looked, but their efforts, too, proved futile. A small boy who heard about the fruitless search slipped into the icehouse during the noon hour and soon emerged with the watch.
Amazed, the men asked him how he found it.
"I closed the door," the boy replied, "lay down in the sawdust, and kept very still. Soon I heard the watch ticking."
Often the question is not whether God is speaking, but whether we are still enough and quiet enough to hear. Yes, Jesus assures us that our heavenly Father always listens to us, but do we really listen to Him? Do we follow the instructions of Psalm 46:10, "Be still, and know that I am God?"
We Are God's Advertisements
According to Jay Walker-Smith of Yankelovich Consumer Research, "We've gone from being exposed to about 500 ads a day back in the 1970s to as many as 5,000 a day today the 2000s." This is a staggering, seemingly impossible number. It helps to understand that this estimate includes ALL advertising exposure, including the labels on every item your eye surveys in the aisles of the grocery store, to the labels on your Fruit of the Loom undies, and everything in between (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, Facebook feeds, billboards, taxi and bus banners, etc.). Well, you get the message. Or then again, maybe you don't.
"The fact that you and the message are in reasonable proximity for you to see it doesn’t mean you saw it. Our brains can’t truly process that many messages. We can’t notice, absorb, or even judge the personal merit of thousands of visual attacks a day," says award winning media and brand strategist, David Lamoureux.
"Look at Times Square, for example," he continues:
That has to be the densest concentration of buy-me messages on the planet. I’m guestimating myself, but I would think that if you stood on the top of the bleachers by the B’way ticket office in Times Square and slowly turned around while counting every ad on every DiamondVision, doorway, cab, bus, billboard, light pole, building, sandwich board, hawker, and flyer you’d come up with no less than 500 messages. That’s 20 minutes of overload in a perfect storm of advertising. But we don’t look at ads that way. We skim to see what speaks to or connects with our core wants, desires, and values. That’s why engagement is such a hot topic in marketing today.
God desires that we become His living advertisements in our world. But in a world with so many competing and distracting messages, we must find a way to distinguish ourselves.
If we are to do so successfully we must not be that obnoxious, cliched jingle that plays over and over again on every radio station. Rather, we must seek to "engage" our audience. Unbelievers, like consumers, will "skim" their surroundings to see and hear only what "speaks" to them or "connects" with them.
"In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16). Becoming "all things to all men, that we might by all means save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22).