After six weeks off for a triple by-pass surgery, it is good to be back! I understand from my surgeon that my paying attention to my body avoided my need for a coffin. Recovery took time. I did a lot of napping and resting. Instead of working in my garden, I sat in the window and looked at it, ate a little and napped again. But once the healing got to a certain point, I moved on. Sleep was not so inviting and necessary.

As followers of Jesus Christ there may come a time when some trauma or circumstance in life demands that we pull back for a while and rest and heal. God is so good to give us that time to regain our footing before leading us forward. Yet, there is a real danger that we get settled into a resting mode and forget that pulling back is only temporary so we may regain strength to continue what God has designed us to do.

These words come from the Message Translation of Ephesians 5:1-17: “Watch what God does and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that. Don’t allow love to turn into lust, setting off a downhill slide into sexual promiscuity, filthy practices or bullying greed. Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, Christians have better uses for language than that. Don’t talk dirty or silly. That kind of talk doesn’t fit our style. Thanksgiving is our dialect. You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them — the usual variations on idolatry — will get you nowhere, and certainly no where near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God.

Don’t let yourselves get taken in by religious smooth talk. God gets furious with people who are full of religious sales talk but want nothing to do with him. Don’t even hang around people like that.

You groped your way through the murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. No more stumbling around. Get on with it! Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it. Don’t waste your time on useless work, mere busy work, and the barren pursuits of darkness. Expose those things for the sham they are. It’s a scandal when people waste their lives on things they must do in the darkness where no one will see. Rip the cover off those frauds and see how attractive they look in the light of Christ. Wake up from your sleep. Climb out of your coffins; Christ will show you the light! So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times! Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants.”

These strong words remind us that God is patient when we are in the process of healing and growing. Hopefully if everything goes as planned, we grow less and less dependent on sleeping and more interested in waking up and being about what God has called us to do. The Apostle Paul writes, “Wake up! Climb out of your coffins!” We are no longer resigned to slumber, stuck in that healing mode, but called to the life God has designed for us. Who is interested in staying in the hospital when the doctor says it is time to go home? Who wouldn’t prefer good health to illness? Who wants to sleep when sleep has done its job? It is time to wake up! Climb out of that coffin!