In An Insanely Restless World, How Do You Find Sanity and Peace? Here's How

Justin Earley seemingly had it all.   He had a job he loved.  He had two great kids he adored.  He had a terrific wife.  He lived in a city where he had tons of awesome friends.   And he didn’t even feel all that stressed.  Then one Saturday at midnight he woke up full of panic.  The next day, that Sunday, he walked around in a fog.   And that night again, the same thing happened, except this time he didn’t fall back asleep.   He went through his job the next day like a zombie.   And eventually one night, at 3 AM, he found himself in the ER, looking for answers.   So, what was creating such havoc in his perfect life?  It turned out.  His life wasn’t so perfect.   His waking up were panic attacks.  He had all the classic signs of a serious anxiety disorder.  So, he tried medication.   Then he tried alcohol.   And then he faced the truth.   He wasn’t going insane.   No, he, Justin Earley, had bought into an insane life.     

You know it used to be a thing.  The first billionaire, Rockefeller, even got one.  It knocked him out of work for six months.  Taking care of folks who got these things is how Kellogg got started, why he first made cornflakes, to help people recover from them. So, what thing used to be a thing?  It was called the nervous breakdown.  

And what caused nervous breakdowns?  Well, the doctor who first diagnosed it said it came from technology and the media.  He wrote how this so accelerated everything that it was creating an epidemic of nervous disease.   And when did he write this? He wrote it in 1881!   Can you imagine how much crazier and faster things have become in the 140 years since then?   It’s become so crazy, so fast that no one now even has time for a breakdown.  We just keep going and going and going!  Is it any wonder, that our nation, even our world finds itself in a sort of global nervous breakdown?   But how does it stop?  How do you find sanity in a world that moves at such an insane pace, one so fast it is even burning up the very planet? You find it in the same way that Justin Early did, that guy with the panic attacks.  

You find it in wisdom that God gave at the beginning of everything, wisdom that literally lives in everything, including you.   How do you live a life of peace and sanity in the midst of an insanely intense world?   In these words, in their very rhythm God points the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say. 

Genesis 1:1-8, 2:1-3

How do you live a sane life in an insanely paced world?   More to the point, how do you live the life God actually created you to live rather than the one that this insane world drives you to live?   In these words, God tells you.   God tells you.  You live in the rhythm.  Why? If you don’t, well, then not living in it will kill you. 

For most of my life, I didn’t notice this.   I didn’t notice that these words we just read have a rhythm.  In fact, if you read them in the original language, Hebrew, you’d see their rhythm even more clearly.   In these verses, God is not giving you simply a story.  God is giving you poetry.  

And God did that for a reason.  God created a story of creation with a rhythm inside it because God was telling you something crucial.   The story of creation has a rhythm inside of it because creation itself, everything that exists has a rhythm inside it.  In everything you’ll find a rhythm.  Our seven-day weeks, our four-week months place us in the 28-day rhythm of the moon circling the earth.   That rhythm gets repeated 12 times in Earth’s year-long journey around the sun.  And That rhythm shapes other rhythms called seasons.  Everything in creation has a rhythm.  And every moment of your life, you live immersed in them. 

They even live within you.  Your heart beats in rhythm.  Your lungs breathe in rhythms.   Even your brain carries rhythms.   And you can slow down the rhythms or speed them up, but you cannot stop them, at least, without stopping yourself, permanently.   

In the rhythms of this story, that’s what God is telling you.  I have imbedded you in rhythms.    It’s why you love music or dance, things that have rhythm. I built you that way.  I built everything that way.    

But here’s the insanity of our world.  So many ignore the rhythm.   People go and go and go.  And they trample over the notes.   They run right over the rhythm.   And then everyone wonders why our nerves get frayed, our anxieties explode, our sleep has to be medicated, and our life becomes one moving nervous breakdown.  But still folks go on, scrolling the screens or simply staring at them until they fall into some sort of fitful, restless. sleep.   And then they wake up and do it all over again.   We live in a world where people willfully ignore the rhythms.  Think about what that means.  When is the only time when the rhythms stop, when the rhythms become a flat line?  Eeeeee?   Do you recognize that sound?  Is that a good thing?  Who wants that flat line?  Yet, human beings live as if the flat line is the way life is supposed to be.  Do you see how deathly insane seeing the world that way is?    

Great athletes instinctively know this.  Have you ever seen one of those marathon tennis matches that go on for hours?  How do the players have the stamina for that?   In studies of world class tennis players, researchers discovered. They’re only playing tennis 35 percent of the time.  What are they doing the remaining 65 percent? They’re resting.   That’s what the bouncing of the balls is about or the pacing before a serve.  The great players instinctively play in a rhythm, and that rhythm helps make them great.   

In your life, stress stimulates growth yes.  But growth only happens when you are not stressed.  So, if you have lots of stress and no rest, you have no room for growth.   You don’t grow stronger.  You grow weaker.   But when you live in rhythm, you reverse that.  You gain energy.  You experience greater life.    The only sane, the only healthy, the only life sustaining way to live is to live in rhythm.  God created you, God created everything for that. 

And in the end, that’s how Justin Early regained his sanity.  He rediscovered the rhythm.  He discovered a rule for his life.   Almost 1500 years ago, a Christian named Benedict discovered a way to live in rhythm.   And he called this way of life, a rule.  But that name can confuse you.   What Benedict created wasn’t what you would think of as rules.  Benedict created a series of habits by which to order your life. 

To use the image that lies at the center of this series, Benedict created a trellis of sorts, one that leads to a full and abundant life.  And to do that Benedict had a profound insight.  Not all habits are created equal.   Certain habits set you on a certain rhythm.  They become keystones that reset your entire your life.   In Benedict’s case, he created keystone habits, rhythms of life for the communal living of monks, rhythms so powerful that monastic communities use them pretty much unchanged 1500 years later.   

And Justin Early, when his life derailed, instinctively turned in that same direction.  He decided to create a set of small habit changes, ones he hoped could restore his life to sanity.  He created a rule, what he called, the common rule, one based on the wisdom of rules such as Benedict’s but ones that anyone could do.   He divided them into four daily habits, and four weekly habits, eight in total. That’s it.  And in those habits, he discovered a way back not simply to sanity, but a way into a truly abundant life.

And the first habit, in many ways the most crucial one reflects the wisdom of the rhythms of this story.   He resolved that he would kneel in prayer three times a day, morning, midday, and evening.   He didn’t give any length of time for these prayers.  They often would not be long at all.  But he was creating a rhythm, a rhythm to break the maddening, insane pace of his life. 

Now why would just saying a few words three times a day do that?  Well, look at this story.  How did God create the universe?  God did it with words.  How do two people become married?  They do it with words.   In Justin Early’s case, he is a mergers and acquisitions lawyer.  In other words, he uses words to literally reshape entire companies.   More than you realize, words are shaping you right now, words you are telling yourself, words that maybe even casting doubt on you doing this very habit.   

Before trying on this practice, the words that shaped my life each morning were the emails that had arrived on my phone overnight.  And they shaped my life in some pretty stressful ways.   But when I tried this practice on, then the words I lifted to God started to shape my life.  And those words framed all the other words that came my way.   And the stress began to lift.   And so, it came to be with that midday break, and with that letting go of the day as I went to bed.  Now in living into such a habit, don’t get hung up on the rule part of it but focus on the rhythm.

When you schedule a pause with God at the beginning, at the middle and at the end of your day, you are allowing God to set your rhythms or reset them from the insane flat-line delusions of this world.  And as you do that, it will begin to change you.  Do you need to kneel every time?  Maybe, maybe not.  But do you need to schedule such pauses with God in your day, every day?   Yes, most definitely yes.   

And what is the weekly habit? Well, that one, if you haven’t already guessed from the scripture is the one that we’re practicing in some way now.   It’s the rhythm of sabbath.  It’s scheduling one 24-hour period a week (not necessarily Sunday) where you do things, and only those things, in that time that renew and revive you.    It may take you a while to figure out what those things that revive you are, and that’s ok.  The point is to schedule the pause.  And if you say to yourself that you’re too busy.   Then that should tell you how insane not only your life, but your perspective has become.   If God needed to rest, then you can be sure you need to.  

So, are you ready to walk away from the insanity?  Then begin by living in the rhythm, 3 pauses with God each day, beginning, middle and end, and then one 24-hour pause a week.   And why do these things?  Because your life’s value doesn’t begin and end with what you do or produce.  It begins and ends with God.  And this God gave up everything for you.   That’s how radically, infinitely valuable you are to God, and that means, how radically, infinitely valuable you truly are.   Live in that value.  Live in the rhythm for which God created you.  And then discover how in that rhythm God frees you for the very life God created, God even died for you to have.  Let us pray.