We moved! I don’t know if you saw the news but it’s true. Recently we loaded up our stuff and moved from our apartment of 5 years to a house. As excited as we are, Amanda and I have discovered the frustrations of moving through what I call the “Box Phase”. 

Seriously, our house is so full of boxes that they have cluttered several rooms of our house. These boxes are all over the place and have made it hard to navigate through the basic structure of the house. Adjusting to our new home has become difficult because of the inconvenience of these boxes lying all around.

A few days ago, I was at home and emptying box after box after box and as I cleared them of their various and sometimes random content (of all things, I found a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle paddleball) a thought ran through my head. Right now we are wrapping up summer, school is getting ready to begin, and I’m already seeing how calendars are starting to fill up with different hobbies, sports, activities, family outings, and all kinds of things that will fill up our time. We are good at filling our lives with different boxes of stuff. So my question is, with all of these different boxes, where do we find time for God?

The author of Hebrews tells us this: “So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.” (Hebrews 4:9-11).

Despite all of the stuff that is going on in our lives, it is important that we still try and make time for our relationship with Jesus. If we believe that Jesus cares so much for us then I believe that we need to believe that he also cares for our well being. We can be so strangled by the different things going on that we abandon God and chase after the busyness. The problem is when we do that, it becomes more frustrating because we only have so much space in our lives and we keep setting up more and more boxes in our way.

For myself, this hits home because my weekends and personal time is already starting to fill up quickly with things that are fun but take up more of my time. However, we don’t plan on sacrificing our relationship with Jesus in spite of our busyness.

I don’t know how busy your life is but I implore you to seek out the rest that God offers. Enjoy that seventh-day style of rest and seek out God more vigorously during this next season. School may be starting, homework may be creeping up, sports may be firing up, and those boxes may start piling up, but don’t be afraid to crack them open and lighten your load before you get lost in the “Box Phase”.