Quiet Schedule

“Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” Psalm 127:1-2

Here’s a thought that, for me, was revolutionary: Jesus doesn’t want your hustle. He wants your trust.

Cue brain explosions.

I am a person who has always had a loud schedule. I don’t like to say no or disappoint people, and I like to be viewed as reliable, productive, and efficient. I am an expectations-meeter, and my calendar has always been dictated by other people. My insides may whisper, “Say ‘no!’ This is too much!” but my default response is to squelch that little weakling, make her buckle down and get to work. My desire to outrun any possible accusations of “lazy” or “flaky” have led me to the verge of complete panic approximately a zillion times in my life. The pages of the planners I’ve owned have practically hemorrhaged inky scribbles and sticky notes, my colorful attempt to wrangle my life into order, to please everyone, to get everything done. It’s a shrill, neon scream: “THERE IS SO MUCH TO DO.”

Church life adds an interesting “spiritual” layer of noise to our calendars. For those of us who have spent a significant amount of time in ministry, hustle feels like the right thing. There are a lot of people hurting, a lot of details that need to be addressed, a lot of events to attend, a lot of convincing other people to attend events, a lot of people who need counsel, a lot a lot a lot. The list inevitably extends beyond what we can do in daylight hours, so we stay up later, get up earlier, take every call, answer every text and email, hustle. Hustle for Jesus.

Somehow I internalized an idea that God needs this hustle from me, that it's the least I can do, that service to other people means saying yes when they ask for something, that ignoring my limits is holy, that denying myself as Jesus calls me to do in Matthew 16:24 means denying any needs I might have. As it turns out, this is not wonderful theology. Better theology is this: God is the only one who doesn’t have any needs; I have a lot of them. Loving others well doesn’t mean being a “yes man”; following Jesus doesn’t mean wrecking my calendar. In fact, those things might be evidence of my lack of faith in His promised provision, rescue, and sovereignty. 

Something else to know about God: He models a quiet calendar. God didn’t just assign a Sabbath, he took one in Genesis 1. How often in the Gospels do we see Jesus sneaking away from a crowd, finding a minute alone, at one point even sleeping in the middle of a fierce storm? In her (incredible, highly-recommended) book Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish Harrison Warren talks about that iconic nap in the storm: “His sleep was theological, in that it displayed an unwavering trust in his Father. But let's not forget that it was also an ordinary example of a tired man taking a nap.”

God rested because He’s a good teacher, and Jesus slept, willingly embracing the limitations of the human body. Meanwhile, we tend to view rest as a luxury or a weakness, and it hinders our ability to serve, at best because we’re exhausted, and at worst because we are idolatrous. 

We’ve become people of loud schedules, sacrificing our God-given need for rest at the altar of a god called Productivity, thinking we can provide and save when those things have always been God’s job. 

When I ignore God’s promise to provide and His command to rest, the implications are serious: I do not trust God. And so I have abandoned the days of planners weighted down with obligation and ink in favor of something better, something more faith-filled: A quiet schedule. 

A Quiet Schedule Makes Space for Our Needs

As Jen Wilkin says in her (incredible, highly-recommended) book None Like Him, “Only God is self-sufficient. Only God has no needs. You have them, and so does your neighbor. Be quick to praise God for how unlike you he is in this. Be quick to confess to him your tendency to trust your own resources rather than acknowledge him as your provider. Be quick to confess your needs to him and ask him to meet them.”

A quiet calendar allows my family to have time to sleep, rest, and connect with God and one another. Naturally, there are seasons when sleep eludes me no matter how badly I want it (hello, newborn phase!), but here also God can provide the perseverance I desperately need or a friend or family member to step in while I take a nap. The beautiful thing is that when I keep my calendar quiet, I have enough margin for God to use me to provide for others who might desperately need rest. Isn’t the body of Christ a beautiful thing? We are not in this alone, but I tend to forget that when I’m enslaved to my schedule.

A Quiet Schedule Recognizes that God Is the Provider, Not Us

Remember manna? (Read Exodus 16 for a refresher.) God provided food for the Israelites every single morning, and they’d go out and gather enough for that day. If they hustled and tried to gather extra, the extra amount would be crawling with maggots the next day. MAGGOTS, YOU GUYS. The lesson: God provides daily for our needs. (Also, hustling is maggot food.) The one exception to the daily manna was the Sabbath. On the sixth day, the Israelites were to collect a double amount, and on the seventh day, God would protect that extra portion from ruin. The Israelites only job on that day was to rest. (A hard job!) The lesson: We need rest, and while we rest, God will continue to provide. 

Provision and rest, provision and rest: two opportunities for us to practice trusting in God. Do we trust him to provide? And even more difficult, do we trust him to provide while we literally do nothing, while we obediently rest? It’s something I’m trying to actively practice each night, when my brain tempts me to stay awake worrying. I want my head to meet my pillow in sleepy trust: God is in control.

A Quiet Schedule Recognizes that God Is the Rescue, Not Us

When I insist on keeping a loud calendar, it’s often because of pride: I subconsciously believe something cannot be accomplished without me. Or worse—maybe I fear that it will be accomplished without me, maybe even accomplished well. There’s dark pleasure in thinking that I’m the only one who can handle certain situations, who can provide the right wisdom, who can mediate the conflict. It gets addictive. When I am honest, it troubles me to say “no” to certain opportunities because I enjoy the feeling of being involved, and I feel jealous when He uses someone else. What if someone else did a better job? Hustle has some ugly implications. But a faithless, unhealthy “yes” not only robs me of an opportunity to practice trusting God, it also robs someone else of an opportunity. God has always been the Rescuer, and He rescues in a million different, mysterious ways. Sometimes He uses me, and sometimes He uses other people. Those who are seeking a quiet calendar will seek to discern the difference, to ask, “What has He given me to do on this day?” The answer is better than you think: not everything.

Dear friends, when we close our eyes to sleep, when we say no to things that are unhealthy for our families and calendars, when we sit and enjoy a hobby or conversation or just sit on the couch at the end of the day, we are saying, “God, I trust you to handle all things.” It doesn’t mean we give up our sacred calling to participate in His will, it just means we stop believing the lie that everything rests on our sagging shoulders. It means we heard him, and we believed him when he said, “Come to me, you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Oh friend, we are so tired. Can we do this differently?

My favorite sentence that I have read this year: “What if Christians were known as a countercultural community of the well-rested—people who embrace our limits with zest and even joy?” -Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary

Hallelujah! Weary friend, ask God to give you the wisdom to know how to quiet your calendar. Go to bed early tonight and close your eyes in good faith that He who watches over Israel never slumbers or sleeps (Psalm 121:4). May the quietness we infuse into our schedules strengthen us to do the unique, hard work He has set before each of us.

If you’d like to read more from me on this topic, click here. I also recommend Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist, the two books I’ve referenced in the article, and Brene Brown's mantra for saying no: "Choose discomfort over resentment."

Sometimes our faith needs to be practiced with a hush, and other times it needs to be proclaimed with a megaphone. This post is part of a series that analyzes when we're called to be loud, and when we're called to be quiet. They'll be tagged "loud faith" and "quiet faith" so that you can find them easily. (See the bottom of the article for tags!)