Reset Button

How often do we think that we are being caught in the hassle of everyday life that we feel that we want a break, we want a personal retreat?But how often do we find ourselves simply cannot afford to do so because we are just being bound by our commitments in various activities, be it work, or other family commitments?

Having decided to work, study part time and so on inevitably have packed myself with endless activities daily. And this desire to have personal retreat/just some holidays to catch up with work and so on is immense. I have heard a lot of friends commenting on how I could possibly do this. Some say that in order to keep up with work, studies and so on, something must be sacrificed. This is true, everyone has only 24 hours, and I have to pack more activities than others, I would have to sacrifice: so my sleep (rest time), my family time (sometimes I think the fact that my family is not around in Singapore sometimes just make it easy for me to entirely to relax on this aspect), my time with friends are all kept to the minimum.

But come to think of it, even those without any part time degree, without any time and effort demanding job, they would still be dissatisfied with the amount of time they have. People always long to have extra time.

This year, our church's theme is going deeper and wider in our encounter with God and so far for the past few weeks, the theme of the sermons have been finding Christ in work, in studies...and basically in everything we do. On the surface, these seem to be very common topics. Maybe to some, these are just reminders. But somehow, feel that there is a deeper message behind it that God wants to convey to me. Wwhen I dwell on what have been preached over the week and follow what have been advised and spoken to me during the sermons, a very strong message sipped through these reflections: Christ serves as the ultimate reset button in my life.

When I load my days with activities, it's like opening a lot of programs in the computers and there would be a point when we are overloaded and the machine just hangs. At this point of time, there is nothing that you can do except to press the reset button. To some, this reset button is going for a cup of coffee; to some, it maybe going for exercise; to some, it maybe playing mahjong; to some, going on a short trip. And if you get advise from some Christians friends advising to Christians, it maybe spending time with God.

But as we all know, we need to do quiet time, we need to spend at least some few minutes reading His Word everyday. This has also become programmed as one of the many programmes in our daily routine that opening this program, sometimes would just add to the load of the already loaded computer. So it offers no help to the situation. Honestly speaking, I am sure some of us do find it that way....

As believer, we have no doubt that our God is the ultimate place that we should seek help from. But sometimes, through our daily commitment, we have forgotten that He is the ultimate reset button and not a program inside the computer. And doing our quiet time and spending time with Him is not the extra program that we need to slot in our schedule everyday. It's actually invoking the reset button that everything in the life is once again back to a no load condition.

This is a perception problem, I suppose. And perhaps this is the essence of the example that a woman spend 10 minutes every morning reading the Bible but she could not hear from Him. And yet, when she spend the same amount of time doing her hobby attending to the plants, she proclaimed that she has encountered God.

Anna