I, then, got to verse 2:

“It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat; for God gives rest to his loved ones.” Psalm 127:2 (NLT)

Wait a minute! Did I just read that right? It’s useless to work hard, being anxious? “…for God gives rest…” Rest? What’s that? Sometimes I can feel so busy “being used by God” doing what I think is essential for “the Kingdom” that I don’t feel rested. Could it be that I am not really being used by God? Could it be that what I am doing is not essential for the Kingdom?

If God truly gives us rest, and we aren’t receiving that rest, then we are not allowing God to do the building and protecting. We are doing it on our own strength. We are uselessly working hard.

If what I’ve noticed in blogs and tweets from fellow workers in children’s ministry recently is any indication, many of us are REALLY busy. When things get busy, it REALLY easy for us to rely on our own God-given gifts and talents to get things done. When that happens, we quickly get overwhelmed, tired, and burnt. In times like that we need to pause and make room for God to step in and take over. Only then can we have that rest God gives to his loved ones.

Now, I’m not saying that we need to stop what we are doing. We very well may need to keep doing all that we are doing. What I am saying is that we stop doing what we are doing IN OUR OWN STRENGTH. We need to do all that we do IN GOD’S STRENGTH. And that isn’t something that just happens. It’s something that we need to intentionally ask God for, which takes putting time in our daily schedule to pause (even for a short moment) to commune with God and allow him to fill us with His Spirit to do all that he has called us to do from day to day.

• What do you do when you start feeling overwhelmed?
• How do you keep from relying on just your talents and gifts to do the work of ministry?
• What are some ways you make space for God to fill you with his rest and strength when things get busy and sometimes crazy?

(photo originally uploaded to Flickr by striatic HT:Wikipedia)

Remembrance Day in Canada is a big deal. Having lived in Canada for just over four years, it’s been interesting to note that holidays aren’t as big of a deal here as they are in the States. Sometimes it seems that holidays are more an occasion to have a long weekend rather than celebrating the holiday itself. Remembrance Day, though (known as Veterans’ Day in the States), is a whole other matter. It is one of the few days that is actually celebrated across the country.

As I was sitting in my kids’ school assembly today for Remembrance Day, I was taken by the realization that Canadians across the country would be observing similar ceremonies and services throughout the day. There is a lot of emotion and pride attached to this day. The neat thing, though, is that most, if not all, of the day is focused solely on those who have fought and or sacrificed on behalf of freedom. It wasn’t about ME and MY freedom. It was about THEM–those who fought and sacrificed and the ones who continue to sacrifice… Remembrance Day is truly about remembering. It’s about remembering the cost that has been paid and continues to be paid by individuals and families for freedom. It’s about paying respect and honor to others. It’s about pausing, even for a moment, and thinking about something other than ourselves and our agendas.

I think all of us would benefit from doing this sort of thing more often… counting the cost, honoring the sacrifices of those who’ve come before us, putting aside ourselves for a moment for the sake of remembering… Lest we forget.

Check out this music video that appropriately portrays just how important Remembrance Day is in Canada:

The New York Times has posted its list of the Best Illustrated Children’s books of 2009. (HT: Daniel Bigler)

I haven’t read these. Maybe it’s time for a trip to Chapters!

• Only a Witch Can Fly
• Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11
• The Odd Egg
• A Penguin Story
• The Lion and the Mouse
• The Snow Day
• Tales From Outer Suburbia
• Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales
• White Noise
• All the World

Have you read any of these?

Found this on TechXav who found it via mona.posterous.com. The original link to this is over at Logic+Emotion.

Which one are you? Scary, isn’t it?

Thanks to my good friend Steve Tanner, I read this great post on the differences between Twitter and Facebook Status updates.

In short, it comes down to Facebook being more about conversations and keeping up with people you already have realationships with and Twitter is more about personal branding and meeting new people. (Yes, there are exceptions to these broad generalizations!)

Many people have different thoughts on all of these multiple social networking platforms (add things like MySpace, Orkut, FriendFeed, Tumblr, Posterous, Ning communities, etc) and what to be a part of and how to update each. Some keep them separate and some try and consolidate it all.

As far as Twitter and Facebook go, I think the article does a good job of clearing some things up.

What are you thoughts? Do these different things help what you do? hinder what you do? How much is too much?

Personally, I keep my accounts separate and do different things with them. The key for me is to have specific purposes for each and limiting the time I spend on each.

USA Today recently published an article on the annual Stress in America survey that is put out by the American Psychological Association. For the first time, they the study included children ages 8 to 17 years old. (HT: Daniel Bigler)

While there were a number of interesting findings highlighted in the article, one thing that stood out was that 63% of the 235 parents who were in the survey stated that their own stress levels had “slight or no influence on their child’s stress levels.” According to the study, though, reality is that children worry more about what their parents worry about like their family not having enough money (30% of the children surveyed stated this as a source of stress).

While I don’t want to infer too much from the suggested correlation between the stress of parents and the stress of their children, it suggests that parents are a huge influence in the emotional health of their children – positive and negative. Judging by the parents’ response that most didn’t think their stress affected their children’s stress levels many parents don’t realize this. It seems that children care about what their parents care about.

As children’s ministers, this shows that we need to be ministering to more than just the kids. As we minister to the whole family, helping parents to find peace and security in Christ, we are helping children do the same.

This is from a blog I’d never heard of:The Ongoing Adventures of ASBO Jesus. (HT: Dave Roberts)

I think I’ll just leave this one as is. I’m thankful to be at a church that values children and doesn’t see them as something to suffer through.

(picture originally uploaded to Flickr by mdevnich)

I ran across this post on the Burnside Writers Collective blog about the prosperity gospel as compared to the voodoo-type beliefs that cause people to kill and maim people with albinism in Tanzania.

It got me thinking about something that has bugged me about how we view prayer and how we teach prayer. I read Facebook updates that say things like, “Starting to feel better! Those prayers are working! Keep it up!” or “Your prayers worked!” as if prayers sometimes don’t “work.”

There are a multitude of books on praying and how to pray and where to pray and what to pray when so you can get your dog pottytrained in a day… OK, maybe not the last one… but you get the point. It’s as if we treat prayer as some sort of special charm or incantation that if we get just right or have fulfilled the prerequisite requirements that we will get the answer we want. If we don’t get the answer we want, then we did something wrong or… God forbid… God has a different (and better) plan.

Am I saying that we stop praying specifically for things… um, no! There is plenty of scripture to support the need for us to approach God specifically on behalf of needs and situations. I think God does wait for us to ask sometimes. And, yes, I do think that sometimes God does change his mind because we ask him to. (I won’t get into all the specific scripture references for these. A simple search about prayer will bring up multiple references.)

What we need to remember, though, is that God is not a vending machine or a deity that needs to be appeased. There is nothing we can do or say that will guarantee God answering our prayers in a certain way. When we treat prayer that way, we turn prayer into some sort of incantation.

Prayer is a dynamic conversation with God where we talk with him about the Story we are engaged in. We let him know of our requests, and we acknowledge his sovereignty over how those requests are answered. We plead with him on behalf of needs and events and people and situations we care about and we trust him to act in accordance with the greater Story he is working out through each of us. It’s a two-way conversation where we become more and more transformed into the image he has created us to be.

When we approach prayer in that way, it becomes less of a transaction and more of an interaction. When we teach kids to approach prayer in that way, then that sets them up for a lifelong connection with a deeply personal God.

Just thought I’d remind the readers of Elemental Children’s Ministry to not forget to set your clocks back before going to bed tonight (October 31). Hope you all have a fun Halloween.

If you are reading this on November 1 in the morning and forgot to set your clock back, you’ve got an extra hour! WooHoo!

This post from Mark Batterson reminded me of what we talked about with the elementary kids this past Sunday:

Follow God even when it doesn’t make sense.

Mark talks about how when you are spiritually immature, you find the greatest peace when you’re in comfortable circumstances. Whereas, spiritual maturity is evidenced by having peace in impossible circumstances. He says, “All of us want a miracle, but most of us don’t want to be in situations that necessitate one!”

I love that! How many of us miss out on seeing God “do something neat” (that’s how I worded it with the kids) because we choose not to follow him when it doesn’t make sense? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we force God’s hand simply by stepping out in blind faith. I’m not even saying that when God calls us to take huge steps of faith that there will be huge miraculous signs that accompany our faith. What I am saying is that when we follow God, especially when it doesn’t make sense, we are setting God up to do something neat. That neat thing might be big… it might be small… but it is something that would not happen without us following him and taking that step of faith.

What an amazing story to be a part of! We need to help kids grasp onto this reality. We need to challenge them to learn to listen to God’s voice and step out in faith (even if it’s a little step) even when it doesn’t make sense. Not only that, but we need to help them realize that by doing so, they are participating along with God in seeing neat things happen in the world around them.