March 14, 2025
I arrive at my four-day spiritual director training and retreat, intended as an interlude of learning and refreshment, with a backpack of things to get done. Stack of books I want to read, both ones I haven’t finished from the most recent assigned readings and—why not?—one more for personal growth—my fun reading. My laptop so I can get some paid work done—having been out for a week in the shortest month of the year, I’m feeling the pressure to actually earn an income. A folder with tax documentation—April 15 cometh soon!
Somehow, amidst the chunks of time set aside for solitude with God, in the early morning and late-night margins of the full days, I envision cramming in all these tasks.
But I’m coming in so tired. I’ve been traveling since early February, constantly leading and ‘on’. I was up late preparing the night before, up early that morning. Daylight savings, six-hour drive. Arriving at last at the place I can stop powering through only reveals the underlying fatigue. When our first night’s session wraps up around 8:30, it’s clear what I need most is sleep.
Maybe tomorrow I can be productive.
One night of sleep doesn’t restore me. When our time of solitude begins after lunch, I know where I need to start. It’s a luxurious three-and-a-half-hour stretch; I could easily get in a nice little quiet time and still plough through some to do list. I write everything down, feeling the need to give concrete shape to the amorphous feeling of uncompleted obligations pressing in on me. It’s daunting. I feel afraid. How will I take care of all of this, especially if I waste this time resting? How will I be ok, how will I have enough?
But I’m called not to begin slogging through it, but to the bed. Even more real than the fear of the work laying in weight is God’s invitation: take a nap.
We each have different ways of resisting. For some, the nap is our standard form. Faithfulness, not succumbing to fear, means facing the to do list. But evasion is not my typical strategy. I power through, seeking to vanquish feelings of anxiety or insecurity by direct battle. The harder thing for me is to believe that my worries are so fully held in God’s hands that I can afford to walk away from them and rest.
Today I battle not my to do list, but my own standard form of resistance, and head to bed. An hour later I’m awake to a phrase lighting up my mind like a distant memory. “Bring into the storehouse,” the words imprint clearly, though I don’t know what from. Scripture?
Google affirms: Malachi 3:10, not a verse, or a book, I remember ever having attended to.
Here, God instructs his people to cease their own version of resistance. They are avoiding bringing into the storehouse the due tithe, or acting like they’re bringing it but giving only their lame and blind animals, as if they could trick God with an appearance of faithfulness that entails no real sacrifice or risk. You’re holding back, God insists—at your own detriment. Give me the real offering, take a chance, and see if I don’t give you so much more you don’t even have space enough to store. My way demands trust. It might look like it’s costing you dearly, but put me to the test, and see if it’s not actually better for you.
What does this mean for me? Is there some tithe I’m holding back? As we review our financials for this year’s taxes, perhaps I need to be extra scrupulous, bring a spirit and trust and generosity to our accounting.
Maybe, but it’s not the heart of what God is showing me now. What is the offering God asks of me? No mere tenth of what I earn, but all of who I am. My heart, my soul, myself. It’s less warning than encouragement. I am offering myself—and as I do, see how much more God offers back to me.
Lately this offering has tipped into a pace leaving me drained, in need of rest with many tasks still to go. This becomes an invitation to bring God the offering of myself not as one who is depleted, run ragged with service and the cares of life, but to risk suspending all this activity to rest, that I would have a whole, healthy self to offer. To receive these four days as an extended Sabbath, time set apart to tend to my body and soul, to un-deplete. To re-set patterns that restore and replenish regularly—limiting the pace at which I take things on, accepting less productivity to make space for friendship and play.
And if I do? If I keep accepting this invitation to simply be with God, to be restored and refreshed, to entrust my to do list to his care—what becomes of all these pressing concerns? Will God take care of my to do list?
I’m meditating on this invitation when I stumble upon a small labyrinth, and my body turns in on auto-pilot. There will be a small alter at the center, a tactile invitation to leave something as symbolic of what we’re setting down in God’s care. I have in my hand a small and lovely stick I’d found, was planning to use to create one a little ‘found beauty’ offering. But I know I’m meant to leave it here instead, and resolve to when I reach the center.
Along the way to offer up my tiny treasure I see in my path a stick more lovely still.
All of this, it seems to say, is God’s. The little stick I held, and resolved to let go of; the one that met me along my way to offer the first. Whatever risk I think I’m taking in letting go of something valuable to me becomes comical in light of the reminder that it was never mine to begin with, it was always His. Why, then, does he bid me give it? Maybe so he can thrill me in giving back so much more.
This is not, of course, a prosperity gospel promise: bring your offering and everything will literally be great. But there is a promise. God’s way is better. Follow God’s way, part with your human treasure, whatever that is, submit to God’s way, timing, method—and there will be abundant life.
As God says through Malachi, “See if I don’t pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.” Will God take care of my to do list? I don’t know. But I know God will take care of me.
