A Year of Sabbaths (Week 30): Good Returns

(Photo from www.freeimages.com #976300)

As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

(Isaiah 55:9)

I remember the time I went to New York City. I took the train into Grand Central Station and met a couple of friends.  We rode the subway to Yankee Stadium, Times Square, and the Financial District. We walked on Broadway and ate pizza by the slice as big as my head. There is something very cool about the whole Big Apple scene. Maybe it is because there is so much going on there that I don't understand.  For example, I don't understand how people drive on those congested streets. I don't understand what millions of people are doing in millions of offices in huge buildings all day and all night in such a hurry. I don't understand life without a yard and I don't understand what happens on Wall Street.

You see, I am not much of an investor.

A couple of days ago, my wife and I loaded up the kids for a getaway to the mountains.  "We need this," we told each other. "It will be good," we said. My wife prepared food in advance for five people for six meals. We wouldn't be near either a store or a restaurant for three days.  She packed clothes for five people.  She arranged for someone to watch the house and chickens while we were gone.  We rounded up the kids and drove 600 miles in one day. When we arrived, we built a fire in the cabin and got a quick night's sleep. The next morning, we went into town and were fit for snowshoes and trekked around a frozen lake.  We walked up the sledding hill a hundred times. The next morning, we piled back in the car and headed home, exhausted and road weary and wondered out loud, "Was this really worth it?"

So, I started to add up the returns on our investment. The first morning in the cabin, we saw a fox run up the creek.  Later, we saw skads of deer and herds of elk.  There was beautiful scenery and spectacular weather. We slept in...twice! There was one night, after snowshoeing and sledding and dinner, we listened to the boys laugh and play a wild game of Monopoly way past their bed time.

Maybe the math doesn't add up and it was way too much work for too short a time.  Maybe it was just too much driving to justify one full day full of memories and laughter, but I don't know if math is always the way to the correct answer, because it was so worth it!  I don't know if I understand everything that happened. I don't know if I know how a week's worth of work and complete exhaustion qualifies as a good investment.  But in those brief moments of breathless scenery and lazy mornings and sibling laughter, we discovered a good return. God's ways are higher than my ways and God's economy is different than Wall Street.

We are already talking about next year's trip.  We will probably do less snowshoeing and more snowboarding...and we will probably stay twice as long and find at least one restaurant where we can eat pizza as big as our head.

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.