Routine

Admit it. We’ve all dreamed of escaping our daily routine and walking off into the wilderness to explore the great unknown. The truth is, we all need a bit of time by ourselves every once in a while, and that’s exactly what luxury travel agency Black Tomato are offering.

Their “Get Lost” service is the ultimate trip for anyone looking to get away from it all—especially if your idea of fun is being deposited in the middle of nowhere with only a backpack, a GPS tracker, and a toothbrush. Travelers are then tasked with the daunting job of navigating their way back towards civilization—a challenging but ultimately rewarding experience for those hoping to embrace their inner nomad.

Black Tomato introduced the concept—a kind of a blind date for vacations with “Survivor” elements—in 2017. Cofounder Tom Marchan, who came up with the idea of getting clients “lost,” thought of it as he considered ways to help people truly relax in an age of digital distractions. He said: “Could we create an experience that requires total mental and physical focus? By being totally distracted, it’s almost impossible for them to think about the day-to-day, everything at home.”

With Black Tomato’s guidance, travelers can choose how lost they want to feel, and how surprised they want to be by their destination. In most cases, travelers don’t know where they’re going until they receive flight information; if they fly private, they might step off a plane with no clue where they are.

For Esther Spengler the only requirements she had were going somewhere warm and far away from the United States. Spengler saved up for the 10-day trip to Morocco, which she said cost roughly $13,000. Her adventure began when she flew to Marrakesh and continued by car into the mountains. After a couple of days of training—learning navigation, fire-starting, and how to put up her own shelter—Spengler was on her own for three days.

Despite bloodied toenails and a tricky time setting up her tarp shelter, Spengler was thrilled with the experience. “It turned out really, really incredible and so much more than I could imagine,” she said.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Experiencing God; Trusting God – God often calls us to step out of our comfort zone into unknown territory and trust in him alone—Abraham was called to a place he did not know (Heb. 11:8); Peter was called to step out of the boat and walk on water (Matt. 14:28). 2) Solitude; Seeking God – We also need times of solitude and withdrawal from life’s busyness to focus on God alone (1 Kings 19:12; Psa. 27:8).

Four-year-old Landry’s reaction to another Monday was video recorded by his home’s outdoor security camera. The lens is focused on the driveway and the street in front of the home. It’s a sunny but cold winter’s day, there are no leaves on the trees, and the lawn is brown.

There is a yellow school bus waiting at the end of the driveway. Then we see four-year-old Landry bundled up in his coat with his backpack, walking down the driveway toward the bus. When he reaches the end of the driveway, he suddenly stops, plops backwards on the driveway, and just lays there. He is apparently exasperated that it was Monday again. The bus attendant comes down the bus stairs and reaches down to help Landry to his feet, and they get on the bus together.

His dad Jason explained, “When he’s really tired, he gets a bit grumpy and then gets way overdramatic. I saw somebody comment that growing up is learning how to do that in your head instead of in physical form. And that’s exactly right. I think we all feel like this on Monday, and I think that’s why it’s so relatable, to see the bus and be like, ‘I can’t do it today.’”

You can view the short video here.

In his book, Worry Less, Live More, Robert Morgan shares the beneficial effects that habits can have in our lives:

The word practice implies we must go to work developing certain skills until they become habitual or proficient, like an athlete or musician. These are the Bible's perpetual habits for a gradual and glorious experience with the God of peace. In her book Better Than Before: What I Learned About Making and Breaking Habits, Gretchen Rubin called habits "the invisible architecture of daily life. We repeat about 40 percent of our behavior almost daily, so our habits shape our existence, and our future."

Rubin went on to explain that habits reduce the need for self-control, saying, "With habits, we conserve our self-control. Because we're in the habit of putting a dirty coffee cup in the office dishwasher, we don't need self-control to perform that action; we do it without thinking." She also added, "Our habits are our destiny. And changing our habits allows us to alter that destiny."

In the original fairy tale version of The Wizard of Oz, the Tin Woodman had once been a real man who was in love with a beautiful maiden and dreamed of marrying her. The witch hated their love, so she cast a spell on him so that one by one his limbs had to be replaced with artificial tin limbs. The tin limbs allowed him to work like a machine. So with a heart of love for his maiden and arms that never tired, he seemed destined to win over the witch's spell.

But the Tin Man said, "I thought I had beaten the Wicked Witch then, and I worked harder than ever; but I little knew how cruel my enemy could be." The Wicked Witch made Tin Man's axe slip and cut himself in half, and though a tinner was able to fasten him back together again, alas, he had no heart … so that I lost all my love for the girl, and did not care whether I married her or not."

Most of you know the rest of the story: caught in a rainstorm, the Tin Man began to rust, remaining in that spot until Dorothy came all the way from Kansas to rescue him and begin his journey to Oz. In the book by Frank Baum, the Tin Man tells Dorothy, "During the year I stood there I had time to think that the greatest loss I had known was the loss of my heart. While I was in love I was the happiest man on earth; but no one can love who has not a heart, and so I am resolved to ask the Oz to give me one."

Possible Preaching Angles: John Eldredge comments, "Notice there was a man who was once real and alive and in love. But after a series of blows, his humanity was reduced to efficiency. He became a sort of machine—a hollow man." Life has a way of doing the same thing to us. We, too, have suffered a series of blows. And, as a result, we may still go through the motions of life—busy, productive, efficient, and religious—but we've lost our heart. But the risen Christ can renew our hearts with his hope.

Players gathering for the first day of basketball practice at UCLA were full of anticipation. They wondered how their coach, John Wooden, would set the tone for the long season to come. They didn’t have to wait long.

Veterans knew what was coming. But first year players were no doubt perplexed by the initial lesson imparted by their Hall of Fame coach: He taught them how to put on a pair of socks. He did not teach this lesson only once, but before every game and practice. Why?

Wooden discovered many players didn’t properly smooth out wrinkles in the socks around their heels and little toes. If left uncorrected, these wrinkles could cause blisters that could hamper their performance at crucial times during games. Many players thought the practice odd and laughed about it then. Wooden knows some of them still laugh about it today. But the coach would not compromise on this basic fundamental principle: “I stuck to it. I believed in that, and I insisted on it.”

In our desire to grow as Christians, we can easily forget about the fundamentals of our faith. If we do, we run the risk of developing painful spiritual blisters that can hurt us as we run our race.

One interesting scene in The Passion of the Christ shows Jesus finishing a table. In it, Jesus is depicted as having a commitment to putting out an excellent product. As a carpenter, he spent many long hours and years doing manual work in a wood shop. His work had to be of the highest quality.

The Christian apologist Justin Martyr made a revealing observation about Jesus' work. During Martyr's life in second century Galilee, he saw farmers still using plows made by Jesus. Theologian Os Guinness writes: "How intriguing to think of Jesus' plow rather than his Cross—to wonder what it was that made his plows and yokes last and stand out."

As Christians we sometimes exalt "spiritual" work and downplay simple labor. However, any work, no matter how mundane, that is done for God is spiritual work.

In his book Teaching the Elephant to Dance, James Belasco describes how trainers shackle young elephants with heavy chains to deeply embedded stakes. In that way the elephant learns to stay in its place. Older, powerful elephants never try to leave—even though they have the strength to pull the stake and walk away. Their conditioning has limited their movements. With only a small metal bracelet around their foot attached to nothing, they stand in place. The stakes are actually gone!

Like powerful elephants, many companies and people are bound by earlier conditioned restraints. The statement "We have always done it this way" is as limiting to an organization's progress as the unattached chain around an elephant's foot.

Yet when the circus tent catches on fire and the elephant sees the flames and smells the smoke, it forgets its old conditioning and runs for its life.

On June 1st, 2003, Jeff Postell, a 21-year-old rookie police officer from Murphy, North Carolina, was on routine patrol, and he did what hundreds of FBI and other law-enforcement officers had not: he arrested one of the nation's most-wanted fugitives.

Postell was working an overnight shift when he spotted a suspicious man crouching in the middle of an alley behind a shopping center. The man was none other than Eric Robert Rudolph, suspected in the bombing at Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996.

At first Postell thought he had just nabbed a run-of-the-mill prowler, but he later discovered Rudolph was a most wanted fugitive.

"I was only doing my job," said the young officer. "It's all in a day's work. I don't deserve any credit."

The moral? Important things happen when we keep our daily routines.

Sacrificing the routine is not what makes effective people. ... Most of us go through life for the peaks, rather than realizing that life is often lived in the valleys and on the hillsides.

Any of us more than 25 years old can probably remember where we were when we first heard of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. British novelist David Lodge, in the introduction to one of his books, tells where he was--in a theater watching the performance of a satirical revue he had helped write.

In one sketch, a character demonstrated his nonchalance in an interview by holding a transistor radio to his ear. The actor playing the part always tuned into a real broadcast. Suddenly came the announcement the President Kennedy had been shot. The actor quickly switched it off, but it was too late. Reality had interrupted stage comedy.

For many believers, worship, prayer, and Scripture are a nonchalant charade. They don't expect anything significant to happen, but suddenly God's reality breaks through, and they're shocked.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering we are where and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition.

Prayer times have been slipped into the local church calendar week almost like fillers. We pray for one minute here and four minutes there. The pastor prays the pastoral prayer on Sunday, and somebody offers opening and closing prayers for everything from softball games to car washes to choir concerts.

Somehow we feel that if we pray at the beginning and end of something, God is bound to bless whatever falls in between. ... The once-popular early morning prayer breakfast has been replaced in many churches by a motivational speaker or Christian businessman who sends us charging into our day--in between an opening and closing prayer!

There is an old story about a mother who walks in on her six-year-old son and finds him sobbing.

"What's the matter?" she asks.

"I've just figured out how to tie my shoes."

"Well, honey, that's wonderful."

Being a wise mother, she recognizes his victory in the Eriksonian struggle of autonomy versus doubt: "You're growing up, but why are you crying?"

"Because," he says, "now I'll have to do it every day for the rest of my life."

The monotony of life, if life is monotonous to you, is in you and not in the world.