There was an intentionality in spending time outside. And like holiness, we don’t just casually wake up one day looking more like Jesus. It takes “grace-driven effort” to obey, to deny ourselves and our pleasures and our desires of selfishness, comfortability, and convenience. Some days were a fight, a crawl towards the door.
“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.” - DA Carson, For the Love of God
2. Our goal was visible and we supported each other in the challenge.
Our chart hung in our kitchen, which is more of a catch-all room than a place to feast. It’s where we gather and laugh and track muddy feet inside. We pass the chart to the fridge. We pass the chart to the bathroom. We pass the chart when we scrounge for a snack in the pantry. Most importantly, we couldn’t go a day without being reminded of the end goal. Tangible. In our faces. A reminder. The kids were chronic chart checkers and asked much about our progress. So much of the Christian life fails to keep the end goal in mind—to be sanctified looking more like Jesus as we obey God’s good statues and remember all that Christ has done on our behalf, as undeserving as we are. We look to our future hope in glory worshipping Jesus with a multitude of hosts and with people from every tribe, nation, and tongue. And so we remind each other, as visible presence in each others’ lives, that better days are ahead of us and to keep fighting the good fight. We support and encourage and edify each other to keep your eye on the prize of Christ.
3. Some seasons were easier and seemed to be more joyful than others.
In August, the Youngs succumbed to the 2-week illness, which seemed to drag out through the entire month. We are unlike many Americans in this regard. In the middle of summer in Virginia it also feels like you’re trapped in an oven heated to the surface of the sun with killer mosquitos the size of birds. Needless to say, our 8 hours outside seemed to be all that were realistically feasible for us tried as we might—I could render it a pathetic and useless month, especially if I were to compare it with June when the days were spent playing tag in the sprinkler and making sun castles from sun up to sundown. But they aren't comparable seasons. They both worked toward our end goal, adding hours to the sheet and allowing us to see more of the sun’s warmth. It definitely took more effort and more intentionality and more help to get outside in August. But we have seasons where spiritual disciplines seem to be lagging. Where it is all we can do to go to church, to pick up our bible, to even utter a prayer. But even those seasons are working for God’s good pleasure in our life (Philippians 2:13). We praise God that in his sovereign goodness that even these hard seasons are working for our good (Romans 8:28). We praise God that our righteousness is staked in Jesus alone, and not our works (Ephesians 2:8). We praise God that he is gracious and bears with us and sustains us when an August comes to our days (Psalm 103).
4. Remembering the springtime reminded us that the brutality of summer doesn’t last.
August caused all of us to long for the next day, to groan deeply for the next season. We knew it wouldn't last forever, but it sure felt like the season would never change. We knew from our past experience that our days were meant to be lived differently, not couped up in the house. We could remember the the sounds of spring when our joy seemed complete as we lived barefoot in bathing suits. Likewise, when the promised trials of the Christian life come into our homes (John 16:33), we can remember God’s past faithfulness. We can look to the promises he has given us through his Son—He has overcome the world (John 16:33), He will never leave us (Matthew 28:20, Psalm 55:22, Isaiah 43:2), His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23), He is a present help (Hebrews 4:16), He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), all things work for the believers good and God’s glory (Romans 8:28), a better day is coming and all things will be made new (Revelation 21:5), among countless others. So we remember his past faithfulness in seasons we struggle, and patiently look forward to a better day that is coming. We chew on the reserves, the feast of God's word we consumed and stored during seasons of plenty so that in seasons of famine we can still nibble the scraps when that’s all we can manage.
5. Excuses are easy to give and readily available. There will be no lack of distractions
If there was an excuse, we could give it. They are always on the tip of our tongue.
“I’m tired.”
“I want to watch TV.”
“I want to sleep.”
“It’s too cold.”
“I don’t want to get wet.”
“It’s too hot.”
“There are too many bugs.”
“It’s too dark.”
“The sun is too bright.”
“My socks feel weird.”
“I have a splinter.”
“The hawks will eat me.”
“I don’t have anyone to play with.”
“The bees scare me.”
“I am hungry.”
“The flowers are dead and it makes me sad.”
“I want to draw.”
And the best (or I guess worst?) and most notable excuse of all…
“I just don’t want to go outside.”
All the excuses taking up valuable time spent outside and causing our hearts to grow bitter in response. How many times do we use these excuses as believers? And like I said, some seasons really are more challenging than others: pregnant with twins, bouts of anxiety, new job in a new city, sickness and physical inability, personal turmoil, the list continues; but 9 times out of 10 I find that my own disobedience boils down to my own self-reliance and the excuse, “God, I just don’t want to.” We never admit that though, it often can be cloaked in self-righteous busyness and playing the victim. The better way is to look to Jesus. Confess to our own inadequacies, weakness, excuses, and tendencies to sin. The better way then is to walk in obedience by the power of the Holy Spirit in the grace that Christ has given. We will make excuses. But they mostly fall flat every time resulting in a more bitter heart.
6. No matter the weather, we plodded forward
There were days that rendered us unable to step outside: high winds, tornados, snow storms, hail stones, frigid temperatures, heat advisories; not to mention an overall need for rest, sicknesses, disciplinary consequences, or injuries. But when I look back at our chart, what I see is not all the days or hours that we missed outside. What I see is a progression forward. Marks on a page that nudge us and motivate us further along in our ultimate goal of 1000 hours. A positive trend of continuing in the face of the certain uncertainty in our days. Similarly, in the certain uncertainty of much of our days as a Christian, we go back to the Bible and find that God's marks on the page nudge us closer to Christ and his commands. We can see looking back how our lives that were once defined by sin are now lived as a saint. We can see where we have conquered a habitual sin by God’s grace and no longer make sinning our practice (1 John 3:4-10). We see a trend towards holiness, a likeness of Christ, and look to the day when we are no longer tempted towards sin and rebellion against Him. And when God looks at us, he sees only the righteousness of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Galatians 2:20).
6. No matter the weather, we plodded forward
There were days that rendered us unable to step outside: high winds, tornados, snow storms, hail stones, frigid temperatures, heat advisories; not to mention an overall need for rest, sicknesses, disciplinary consequences, or injuries. But when I look back at our chart, what I see is not all the days or hours that we missed outside. What I see is a progression forward. Marks on a page that nudge us and motivate us further along in our ultimate goal of 1000 hours. A positive trend of continuing in the face of the certain uncertainty in our days. Similarly, in the certain uncertainty of much of our days as a Christian, we go back to the Bible and find that God's marks on the page nudge us closer to Christ and his commands. We can see looking back how our lives that were once defined by sin are now lived as a saint. We can see where we have conquered a habitual sin by God’s grace and no longer make sinning our practice (1 John 3:4-10). We see a trend towards holiness, a likeness of Christ, and look to the day when we are no longer tempted towards sin and rebellion against Him. And when God looks at us, he sees only the righteousness of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Galatians 2:20).
7. Our time outside wasn’t reserved to a single location
Most of our time was spent outside in our backyard. We have spent hours and money to transform this space into a welcoming oasis, a retreat from chaos. It is my great joy to do so, and I find so very much pleasure in this. But the time on our sheet wasn’t marked by only the hours spent in our own backyard. It was spent at zoos, the lake, in Texas and Mississippi and Tennessee, in gardens, in friends’ yards, on playgrounds, and on walks. Any time and all time outside counted. For Christians, there is no distinction. You are a Christian and your identity is in Christ, who for His great name' sake and His own pleasure and at His own expense, saved you (John 15:15, Galatians 2:20, Ephesians 2, Philippians 3:20, Colossians 3:4). There is no compartmentalization of it—at work, at school, at home, at church, in the grocery store, on the ball field, at the movies, in the morning, in the evening, at a concert, at the mall. Any time and all of your time is lived as a redeemed, adopted, chosen, reconciled, beloved son of God.
So we got the 1000 hours in a year. That was the goal. We made it. Our next 1000 hour chart is already printed and ready to be filled in. I am currently typing outside while the blondes are all barefoot swinging in the hammock. I will mark 6 hours for the day; spring is almost here. And though analogies always fall short in some capacity with our Christian walk, I found great comfort in reflecting over the past year knowing that there’s grace in hard seasons, there’s better days ahead for the believer, and that sometimes obedience really is just a matter of opening the door and walking outside.
