Wednesdays with Words: We Should More (or Not)

A year ago, I asked for book recommendations for my year of Attend! One of the books recommended was Crazy Busy by Kevin DeYoung. I started in in December.

But, now, I’m thinking it is almost as perfect for my year of }pacify{.  Can we really be at peace when our schedules are so chock full that we either can’t breathe or are generally exhausted? When the to do list is overwrought?

I’m in Chapter 4 which DeYoung calls “The Terror of Total Obligation.” How many of us feel guilt over the “can do” work of the Christian life because we translate it in our heads as “should do?”  I wrote about this one other time when I was reading Own Your Life but I think it’s a topic that I can’t hear too often as a person who is always seeking to make everyone at ease.  Christianity isn’t a giant to do list.  It frees us from a to don’t list, but it frees us – not burden us.

DeYoung gives us a list of more that is often placed on the heads of modern American Christians, but later in the paragraph he releases us from that bondage:

Not that the tasks he lists are not challenging in themselves, but they are not the onerous checklist that ties our hands either.

Neither he – nor I – are saying that we shouldn’t do the things in the list. Rather, they are in service to the calling of dying to self and living to Christ.  Not that endless to do list that weighs us down, rather a list of ways to serve Christ in the season we’re in.

I hope you have a blessed New Year remembering the only should is conforming to Jesus.  The other work will fall into place.  And He gives peace.

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