The Eucharist–This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you.
Writing from the heart, close to the bone has these eucharistic characteristics: pouring out your life-blood.
And so, it’s no wonder that one sometimes feels depleted. Emptied. Exhausted.
Bell recommends taking a break when this is the case, coming unplugged, unwired. Going away perhaps, and waiting for the springs to refill at their own pace and time.
The results sometimes surprise one!!
He suggests balancing time spent shedding one’s creative blood with time replenishing the empty tanks, and letting God refill them with fresh wind, fresh fire.
Bell also suggests laying down your work when you are feeling burnt out, laying it down for as long as necessary, and when you come back you are renewed and refreshed and can approach your work with fresh vision, passion and perspective.
Good to hear since I work best in short, intense bursts, and regularly burn out.
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90 % of the energy expended in one of his books was spent on “mind-games.” Second-guessing his work and its reception. Don’t do it. Get it out there. Leave the reception to God.
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After his glorious vision of angels ascending and descending the highway, Jacob says, “Surely God was in this place and I was not aware of it.”
We live in a God-drenched world, and being out in it, experiencing it, puts us in touch with infinite springs of creativity, with God himself.
Moses in the desert saw a bush which burned and was not consumed. Bell suggested that that bush was always burning. It was just that Moses slowed down enough to notice it.
It burns for us too, eternity in blades of grass.
“My father is always at his work, to this very day, and so am I,” Jesus says. God is always at this work, creating newness, sharing his visions with us. Those who can see God always at work, in our hearts, in the hearts of people and in the world will never run out of things to write
Rob Bell seems quite relaxed, happy and confident in his own skin, apparently quite unscathed by the tsunami caused by Love Wins.
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Poem written by Percy Shelley to his wife, Mary Shelley, who was deeply depressed
Thanks Nancy, that's a wonderful insight I missed.
3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
Stepping out of his routine, and his to-do list, enabled him to walk on holy ground!
Amazing to think that the bush always burns, that God is always in “this place” and we do not see it!
Sounds an interesting talk – the title alone is giving me much food for thought.
I think the burning bush was 'always burning' but I doubt if Moses was rushing and needed to slow down. He looked and then decided to “turn aside” to see better (Exodus 3:3). It's when he turned aside that God called to him. This to me is more than just stopping. It's a deliberate focus of the attention on something away from the path Moses walked – stepping out of his way in order to see God's way(s).