Avoid burnout by letting God serve, motivate you

There is much concern today about a condition called "burnout." The word is descriptive, suggesting a waning vitality, a fire going out. At worst it denotes what is left over at the end: a cold, dark vestige of something that once was full of light, life and meaning.

Those who have studied the phenomenon suggest that it often happens to people most in touch with the spiritual resources that ought to keep burnout from happening. They say that the person most susceptible to the fatigue and frustration, which characterize burnout, are those in the helping professions and those whose caring and sensitivity prompt them to do the most they can for as many as they can for as long as they can. The more committed we are to Christ, to ministry and to serving, the more vulnerable we are to disillusionment and despair, to fatigue of spirit and waning of motivation.

In the British navy there is a custom called "the still." If there is a sudden crisis or a pressing dilemma aboard ship, a whistle calls the crew to a period of complete silence. When the still is blown, all persons aboard are to stop what they are doing and think: "Prepare to do the wise thing."

Time apart can be for us, as for Jesus, like "the still," through which God reveals to us the way to go, the productive response to make, the helpful word to speak. We wait for God's signal so that the hidden and unbidden in us are uncovered and we are made aware.

When the answers emerge and the direction is clearer, time alone reaches us further with reinforcement. When he knew what he must do and surmised the consequences of his choices, Jesus stayed in his lonely place a while longer to deepen his faith, to receive power, to sound his depth of confidence in God's sufficiency.

On the Mount of Transfiguration, this certainty became a radiance in him; and in Gethsemane's agony he made sure he wanted to do what he knew God wanted him to do. He needed that certainty to do it; and when he was sure, he went forth and never turned back.

When we face radical choices and moments of truth, we need time alone to confront all that our decisions will require of us, to name our fears and claim the power that enables us to "mount up with wings like eagles, to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint".

I think of Martin Luther's solitude on that night before he went before the Diet at Worms. I remember how Bernard of Clairvaux would take himself to a monastery for as long as six months at a time when no one saw him or heard from him. Then he would emerge, ablaze with spiritual conviction, making kings and popes quake in his presence. Or recall Abraham Lincoln's long walks by himself and his private moments of meditation before making difficult choices in the dark days of the Civil War.

And I remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. telling of his lonely vigils of prayer - many of them at the kitchen table in the early morning hours - before launching his nonviolent protests on behalf of justice and human dignity for all people, especially for the blacks of our nation.

"Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest awhile," said our Lord. In order to be renewed, to find perspective and peace, and be sure that God's power, which holds the planets in their places, also holds us. We must be nurtured if we would minister. Unless we get away, before long we will be giving up.

Maurice Maeterlinck tells an old parable. It centers on the keeper of a lighthouse on a dangerous seacoast. Winter was closing in and the supply boat had not yet arrived with reserves of oil. The few inhabitants of the little village were facing discomfort and possible death in the cold, bleak area, because their individual oil supplies were running out.

Because they were his neighbors and because he was a compassionate man, the keeper gave away, little by little, the reserves of oil at the lighthouse. Then one night the bright beacon light went out, and there was no oil to feed the flickering flame. The supply ship bringing the needed reserves of oil was driven onto the rocky coast and destroyed.

It is only a story, Maeterlinck said, but it suggests this truth about life: We are never to give away the oil of our lamp, be it ever so little. Our gift is the flame. It is blessed to give, but it is blessed to keep, to reverence our own life.

If we do not rest, we soon will not be able to communicate. To give to others, we must keep something for ourselves. Before going out to serve others in the name of God, we let God into serve and recreate us. "Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest awhile."

Dr. Fred Andrea is the pastor of Aiken's First Baptist Church.