When Life Rewrites Your Summer Plans (Sacred Rhythms Part 1)

Sunday Livestream

3 Aug

YouTube Video of the Church Service

Ever had that moment when your carefully planned rhythm just... stops? When the holiday you've been working towards for months suddenly feels impossible, or the rest you desperately need gets snatched away by life's unexpected curveballs?

Matt Edmundson knows that feeling intimately. Two months ago, he should have been packing for his annual escape to a lake house in the US - a rhythm he'd built over years to recover from intense work periods. Instead, he found himself in an NHS hospital room, watching a nurse tell his wife Sharon she had melanoma. In that moment, all those carefully crafted rhythms - the conference, the lake house, even a planned trip to Jersey - evaporated like morning mist.

Why Two Weeks Can't Fix Fifty

Before we jump to solutions, let's be honest about what's really happening. We've created a culture where rest is something we escape to, rather than something woven into our lives. The statistics are sobering - 61% of UK workers don't even take their full annual leave. We work ourselves to exhaustion, then expect a fortnight somewhere with overpriced cocktails to restore what fifty weeks of intensity have depleted.

It's a bizarre system when you think about it. We work crazy hours to pay debts, then book holidays that create more debt to justify the struggle. The average UK family spends over £2,000 on holidays, with three-quarters overspending. We are then surprised when the benefits fade within 14 days of returning to work.

Maybe the issue isn't that we need better holidays. Perhaps the issue lies in our rhythm itself.

God's Threefold Rhythm

Thousands of years ago, God established a divine rhythm in the book of Leviticus. Not the modern cycle of burnout and escape, but a sustainable threefold rhythm:

Daily work with purpose - meaningful labour, not just the daily grind
Weekly Sabbath for rest - protection of downtime built into the pattern
Seasonal festivals for celebration and remembrance - regular rhythms throughout the year, not one massive holiday

These weren't escapes from life but divine appointments woven into life. The biblical festivals weren't isolated events where you disappeared from reality. They were scattered throughout the year - Passover in spring, Pentecost seven weeks later, autumn festivals - creating regular patterns of work, rest, and celebration.

Divine Appointments in Hospital Waiting Rooms

After Sharon's diagnosis, Matt and Sharon almost cancelled their plans to attend Glampfest. But they decided to go anyway—and something beautiful happened. Sitting in those little chairs next to a crackling fire (yes, inside a tent, which still feels wonderfully wrong), they experienced what the Bible calls a divine appointment.

They didn't know anyone there. Matt didn't have to perform, answer questions or check emails. They just got to be. In the peace and quiet, something shifted. Not because they'd escaped their problems - the cancer was still there - but because they'd found space to see life through God's perspective.

This is what sacred rhythms offer: not running from something, but running to Someone. Not denying difficulty, but transforming perspective through gratitude and presence.

Matt discovered something profound in those difficult months: "I'm starting to understand more and more the threefold rhythm of rest and recovery that God has put down, and that doesn't need me to be on a plane because God could care less about the plane."

Gratitude in the Disruption

Through one of the most challenging seasons, Matt's overwhelming feeling is gratitude. Not for the cancer (let's be crystal clear), but for God's presence in it. Grateful for early detection, for the NHS, for the community, for how crisis clarifies what truly matters.

As Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians: "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances - not for all circumstances, but in all circumstances - for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus."

Gratitude isn't blind optimism. It doesn't deny difficulty. But it transforms perspective, helping us see things as God sees them.

Finding Sacred Rhythms This Week

Here are practical ways to begin discovering God's better rhythm:

Notice the threefold pattern - Where is it already present in your life? Where is it missing?
Protect your daily devotion time - Even five minutes of gratitude and prayer creates space for perspective.
Fiercely guard the weekly Sabbath - This isn't legalism, but a life-giving rhythm.
Look for divine appointments in disruptions - Instead of seeing interruptions as stealing rest, ask "God, are you writing something different here?"
Practice gratitude, especially when plans don't work out - This transforms how we see life's unexpected turns.

Next Week -> Carrying Less

Over the next four weeks, this Sacred Rhythms series will explore how biblical festivals teach us to carry less (Feast of Unleavened Bread), find authentic community (Pentecost), embrace impermanence (Tabernacles), and practice the ultimate reset (Jubilee). These aren't ancient rituals but living practices for modern burnout.

The Big Picture

I wonder if life's disruptions aren't God taking something away, but inviting us into sacred rhythms that no circumstance can steal. When your summer plans get rewritten - whether by illness, financial pressure, or unexpected responsibilities - maybe that's not the end of rest. Maybe it's the beginning of discovering that divine appointments can happen anywhere.

Because here's the truth Matt discovered in that hospital waiting room: when life rewrites your summer plans, God might just be writing something better. Not easier, not more comfortable, but better - more sustainable, more grateful, more present to what truly matters.

Summer Plans - August 1 on 2025-07-27 at 14.41.30
[00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to Crowd Church's non-live, live stream here in August. My name is Matt, and I just wanted to jump on here before we get into the talk and let you know what's going on. Now this isn't your usual crowd service, uh, and that, if I'm honest, is completely intentional. If you are a regular crowd, you will have twigged that this isn't the usual live.
There's no, you know, no me fluffing lines or figuring out technical difficulties, or Anna laughing at me when I do 'cause something has gone completely wrong. Uh, and you definitely won't be getting conversation streak today. But here's the thing, August for crowd is different, isn't it? It's always different for everybody.
Uh, half of us usually are somewhere hot trying to forget what the weather's like back home, especially if you live in England. And the other half is wondering why we didn't book something ages ago. [00:01:00] Uh, so instead of pretending everything's normal, we've done something a bit different. Yes, we like to do the non-live, live streams in August where the whole team gets to rest.
And recuperate. Uh, but we obviously still want to put stuff out for people to connect with, and this year, our August talks, uh, are prerecorded as usual and on live, live stream. You can watch them whenever you like. Whether that's Sunday morning with, you know, a cup of tea or Wednesday afternoon when you're avoiding doing something important.
Whenever we just might, uh, this August we're exploring something called sacred rhythms. Looking at how biblical festivals offers a completely different approach to rest, to celebration and actually living life. Well, I thought this would be a really good thing to study. Whilst we do our normal holidays, like what does the Bible have to say about taking a holiday, uh, an inner culture that's obsessed with, you know, working ourselves into the ground and then [00:02:00] collapsing for two weeks somewhere with overpriced cocktails.
Maybe just, maybe the Bible has a better way. Maybe there's some ancient celebration, uh, that knew something that we've forgotten about. You know, like what does it actually mean to truly rest and to celebrate and to recover? So that's why we're doing this. So settle in. This one's just for you. No pressure to participate, no need to unmute yourself.
Just space to think about how God might want to reshape the rhythms of your life. So let's dive in.
Two months ago, I should have been packing for a trip to the us uh, trip that I do around the end of May every year to speak at a conference over there. It's a rhythm I've got into the last few years, and what I do is after the conference, I take a week to 10 [00:03:00] days. Visit a few friends, but also get a house by the lake.
Go take an Airbnb by the lake. Uh, and I rest and I recover. And it's become a wonderful rhythm and I look forward to it. I kind of work hard from Christmas until the end of May escape, uh, to the metaphorical mountainside. Uh, as we like to say, just like Jesus did. You know, he, he would often go up to the mountain side.
Uh, and the lake house was my mountain side. Instead, I wasn't there. I was not sat on a plane. I was sat in an NHS hospital room that had that sort of chemical clean smell that you can only find in a hospital. And I was sat on a vinyl chair that you could easily wipe down. And, you know, for cleanliness, I'm guessing, watching a very, very kind nurse tell my beautiful wife, Sharon, she had melanoma.
Stage one skin cancer. At least that's what they think, because at the time of recording this, we're still [00:04:00] waiting for the results of the lymph node biopsy. But regardless of the stage, no one ever wants to hear the word cancer. It's a horrible, horrible word, and suddenly all are carefully planned. Rhythms, the conference, the lake house.
Even a trip to Jersey. We had planned to go stay at a friend's house in July. They all kind of evaporated. It's like the, the consequences of that single conversation with the nurse. And I dunno if you've ever watched your plan sort of dissolve like that. Maybe not just a holiday, but maybe your life rhythms that you've carefully built, you know, or the routines that you use to keep you sane, uh, the escapes you've earned that you desperately need.
Well, welcome to Sacred Rhythms, where over the next five weeks we're exploring how God's ancient festivals [00:05:00] offer something radically different from our modern cycle of burnout and escape. Because here's what I'm learning in all of this, right, in all of the craziness that is happening right now is that when life rewrites your summer plans, God could very well be writing something better.
And so today we're gonna dig into it. We are gonna look at what happens when life disrupts our carefully planned rhythms. We're going to ask probably one of my favorite questions that I've asked for a little while, and that is, why can't a two week holiday fix what 50 weeks of burnout creates? It's such a powerful question.
And number three, the other area I wanna look at is this threefold rhythm of. God. And what if his threefold rhythm isn't about schedules or crazy holidays? What if it's about creating space for divine appointments, [00:06:00] even in a hospital waiting room? Could that happen? I think it can. So what happens then when life disrupts our carefully planned rhythms as we're sat there?
In the hospital room and the nurse is telling us this news. To be fair, I wasn't thinking straight away about, oh my gosh, what's gonna happen to all my trips? Um, that came later. And Sharon, she took the news remarkably well, actually, she told me, um, she, well, she would tell you later that. Uh, she felt God had been preparing her.
Not that she was in faith for something bad to happen, but she was in faith that God would be with her if something bad happened and she just had this sort of divine peace that was beautiful to witness. But also, if I'm honest, hard to watch because like I say, no one wants to hear the word cancer, and I certainly don't want to hear someone tell my wife she has cancer.
[00:07:00] But practically it did make, it did mean we had to change some things. It meant that we had to rethink, uh, some plans. So I canceled the trip to the states. Um, Sharon didn't ask me to, uh, but you know, how could you leave? And I'm not saying this because, you know, look at me, but genuinely, how could you leave in a situation like that?
Right? We didn't know when surgery would be, what the treatment would be. Uh, and more than that, I think I just needed to be present, not just for the medical appointments and the travel and the surgery, but for all of those conversations that needed to happen between those. And the hardest part, like I say, is not, was not me canceling.
I, this is not me bragging, uh, that I canceled the trip. Uh, please don't mishear me on this. Um, but it's, it's been interesting since I've done it because I've been very aware that I've been trying to maintain. My spiritual rhythms, whilst life was perhaps [00:08:00] demanding from me, a completely different dance. So every morning, for example, um, I would wake up early, uh, and do my devotions and that was my, that's been my daily rhythm for a long time.
They felt essential, and actually as we've been going through what we've been going through, they've been even more essential because on top of the cancer business is growing. We've just bought a new company. Also at work. Um, I, I run a company in case you don't know as, as well as be involved in crowd. Um, we had some extra ordinary events, um, that demanded quite a lot of time and attention from me on top of everything else that was going on.
And I just felt exhausted. So I tried to schedule a week off, even just taking a week off at the house, you know, just to get some space to clear my head. Um. But that, that all evaporated too. So my usual rhythm, uh, has not happened this year. Right. And it's not [00:09:00] just me. And I get that, you know, I think we've created a culture where rest is something that we escape to.
If you rewind your notice, the intentional word at the start where I said I escaped to my metaphorical mountain side. We like to use this word escape, don't we? Like, it's not something woven into life. So, uh, let me just throw a few statistics at you, which may or may not be helpful. I like statistics. Uh, but 61% of UK workers don't take their full annual leave.
61%. That's a lot, right? So we work ourselves to this sort of place of exhaustion. And then expect, like I say, a two week holiday to somehow restore what 50 weeks have, uh, of intensity have depleted, and we're surprised when it doesn't work. But thousands of years ago, God, I think, established something different, something [00:10:00] quite radically different.
There's a book called Leviticus. It's right at the beginning of the Bible. It's one of the first five books of the Old Testament written by Moses. Uh, and in there we find some really interesting insights, uh, into God's thinking on this whole thing. He never used the word escape, but he did give them a sort of a threefold rhythm, if you like.
We see this in scripture, so there's what I call the daily work. So we work every day with purpose, with the exception of the second thing, which is the weekly Sabbath. So we have daily work with purpose. We have a weekly Sabbath for rest, and then. In Leviticus, we also read about seasonal festivals for celebration and remembrance, God's threefold rhythm, the day, the week, and the annual.
Now these, like I say, were not escapes from life, but they were divine appointments with God woven into [00:11:00] life. Okay. So, not escapes, but divine appointments. And so the weekend after Sharon's diagnosis, um, we went to see the surgeon, uh, and had a chat with the surgeon. But after it, um, after that conversation, we were like.
We'd already booked to go to a festival. Interesting. First festival we'd ever been to, um, as a married couple. Uh, it wasn't a Christian one and it wasn't because of this talk. This has all come out. This is where you see the hand of God in many ways. Um, it was something that was arranged by friends, right?
They were running this festival. It's called Glamp Fest Great Festival. If you're, if you ever wanna do a festival, go check out Glamp Fest. It's great right now. We almost canceled going. But felt like we should probably go anyway. And James, uh, had lent us a glamping tent with, you know, all the trimmings.
It was great. And even had a log [00:12:00] burner inside it. Can I just say completely unnatural to put a log burner inside a tent? But it worked and I loved it. So we went there for that weekend and it's quite interesting what actually happened Now. Let me just return back to this question, why can't a two week holiday fix what 50 weeks, uh, of burnout creates?
Because if I'm honest, in previous years when I've worked flat out expecting, you know, that conference or vacation to restore me, I, I don't actually know how well they worked. Maybe the last few years of the states had got the, I got the sense that I knew what I was doing a little bit more. It's taken a long old time.
If you are like me, for example, um, the first week you go away, might not be rest at all. You might have to go away. I have to go. It's sort of like day 10 or 11, really before I start to [00:13:00] relax. Um, a couple years ago I remember doing, uh, a really crazy travel schedule where I flew into the states, did the conference, and then I flew over to the West coast, uh, up back to the center of the states, then flew over to the East coast.
All in about two weeks time, and I came back so exhausted, so much more exhausted. And this was supposed to refresh me. Now, don't get me wrong, it was good to see friends and I created some wonderful, wonderful memories on that trip. I just, I do not regret it, but I did learn from that, that I was, when I live out of a suitcase, um, and don't get what.
Is this metaphorical mountain side time where it's just time where it is you and God. It's not really that restful, right? And it's what our achievement based rest kind of looks like. It's what sold to us in many ways. You know, work hard to earn that [00:14:00] perfect holiday. Uh, the promise, you know, that just spend crazy amounts of money on this holiday because you, you, you've earned it and justify it because you work hard, right?
It's just, it's, it's a really extraordinary thing. Uh, when you think about it's, it is an, it's a bizarre idea because I just don't think you can actually store up rest like a battery. You know? Just, I don't think that's how it works. Here's what I see, and this may or may not describe you. It describes a few people that I know, so I'm not gonna mention any names, but, um, I see this happening a lot, right?
You work hard all year often to pay debts, right? If we're honest now, you work crazy all year to pay your debts. So what do you do? You book a holiday and you look forward to that holiday because that justifies in your head. The work, it's like a reward, right? But to [00:15:00] buy that holiday, you have to take on more debt to make it special enough to compensate for all the struggles that you've had throughout the year.
And then you learn the holiday never actually solves it because there's a phrase which I'm a big fan of, uh, that comes to mind here. And that is the issue is not the issue. And the research here actually kind of backs this up, right? So if you go away on holiday, typically the benefits of that holiday fade within.
14 days. 14 days of returning back to work, all the benefits have gone. And we're spending in the UK on average over 2000 pounds on holidays. Uh, and actually even when we go on the holiday, three quarters of us are over spending. Three quarters, so we're getting into debt and quite a significant debt over these holidays, [00:16:00] and then we have to work crazy all year to pay those debts off.
No wonder, over 74% of UK adults are reporting at the moment, overwhelming stress levels. Something is broken in this system. Now, if you've been a regulatory crowd, you will know that we talked about, um, Sabbath a few weeks ago. Anna did that Great talk. Go check that out if you haven't done so already. Um, so think again about the threefold rhythms.
Number one, the day's work with purpose. We're gonna be talking about that in a few months time when we get into economic wholeness. Um. The weekly Sabbath. Anna talked about that a few weeks ago. So in this one, in this series, in August, actually, we're gonna look at, um, these festivals in detail and see just how different.
God's pattern is now, the biblical festivals weren't isolated events. This is the first thing that we learned where you kind of escaped life. [00:17:00] These festivals were woven throughout the year, so you had Passover in Spring, Pentecost seven weeks later. Then Autumn festivals. You had these regular rhythms of work.
Rest and celebration. It wasn't like we worked crazy August boom, holiday boom, work boom, Christmas boom work. I dunno why I did that. Uh, but it was, there were, the whole year was interspersed with these sort of regular rhythms of work, rest and celebration celebrations, really important. So God seems to have it.
So we. We maintain healthy patterns of rest and celebration throughout the year is maybe another way to put it. Uh, and actually the science also backs that up right now. The Israelites, let's look at those for an example, because really fascinating stories. So the Israelites, the very, very early Israelites, right?
Um, there are in, they're in Egypt and they're slaves. You imagine, you know, your boss is a nightmare. Nothing [00:18:00] compared to what the Israelites were facing in slavery, and many of 'em died. I mean, there's all kinds of things going on, isn't there in, in ancient slavery. Um, but the Israelites were slaves and then God miraculously sets them free, which is an interesting place to be, right?
Because again, metaphorically as Christians, we use this all the time. It's like we were in some kind of bondage to a system. Sound familiar? God sets us free from that system. But even though we're free, God has to change our thinking a lot because whilst we're out of it, our mindset and our thought patterns are still in it, right?
So, um, just because we're no longer slaves doesn't mean our mindset doesn't have elements of that in it, right? And so we've heard if you've been around church, you'll have heard talks about this many, many times. So God, when they escape in Leviticus, gives 'em this sort of sustainable rhythm that prevented burnout [00:19:00] rather than just treating its symptoms or just.
Letting life go on. You know, you, you are now free. He didn't say, go live the life you want. You know, you do you. He didn't say that, right? No, we still had to work, but do it in the safeguards of these regular rhythms throughout the year. So what if, like I say, God's threefold rhythm isn't about rigid schedules.
What if the purpose behind these is about creating space? For these appointments with God, can they happen and can they happen in a hospital waiting room? So when, um, returning back to my story, right, uh, Sharon and I went to the glamping site to, to the Glamp Fest. And that night where sat in the tent. And these little, and these little chairs that we had next to this sort of crackling fire.
Yes, it does. It still feels wrong to say, but I can't tell you how [00:20:00] wonderful it was. Um, but as we're sat there reading just in the peace and in the quiet, something shifted, I think, um, we didn't know anybody there. Uh, I didn't have to do any, any of this kind of stuff, which I love doing, but it's nice to have a break.
Uh, I didn't have to an answer any questions. I wasn't checking email. We didn't have to make any decisions. We just got to be. It was a bit of a divine appointment. It's what the Bible calls Moad, dim, and I, forgive me for my Hebrew pronunciation, divine appointments, the, these sort of festivals, these moments that God points throughout the years.
Uh, throughout the year where it's not just go sit by a beach, it's divine appointments, time out with him. Now, they're not religious obligations, but very clearly they are appointed times where God is gonna meet with his people in special ways. They're not about escaping life, but seeing life perhaps through God's perspective.[00:21:00]
Uh, Sharon and I, um. I think have experienced this. Uh, we have become deeply grateful throughout this journey. You know, that if people ask me How am I doing, uh. With Sharon and, and obviously the news, and I think the overwhelming sense that I feel right now is gratitude, not because of the cancer. Let me be clear.
I'm not thanking God or anybody for the cancer. I really want to be clear on that, but I think in the midst of it. We are so, so grateful for God's presence. Um, I'm really grateful for early detection, uh, which is its own miracle story, if I'm honest with you, that Sharon will share with you someday. Um, I'm grateful for the NHS, I'm grateful for the team.
I'm grateful for our friends, for our community. Um, I'm grateful for, for the way this has sort of clarified what really matters to us. And yeah, I mean, I've been studying [00:22:00] gratitude. For months. You know, I did a talk on it recently at Crowd. Um. I, I do look back and think, is this God preparing me perhaps for this season?
Because gratitude isn't blind. It doesn't deny the difficulty, but it transforms our perspective. We see things as God sees us, and this is one of the key reasons for these festivals, is to maybe shift our perspective. Uh, in one Thessalonians, Paul, right into the church says this. He says, rejoice always.
How often should I rejoice? Paul? All the time, mate. All the time. Paul, how long should I pray for? Well, I just pray without ceasing. You can just imagine as he is writing this, can't you? And finally he says, give thanks in all circumstances. Give thanks in all circumstances, not for all circumstances. In all circumstances, [00:23:00] not just in some of them, you know when life is good, but in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus.
It's a powerful verse, isn't it? So what does this all look like? Now I'm learning and it's taken me, you know, when you think back, I wish I'd learned this sooner. This is probably one of those things that it's not about. The August holidays, although I love my August holiday, and I'm very, very grateful for them when they happen, right?
But it is about pressing into those daily rhythms of devotion and gratitude. It's about protecting that weekly Sabbath. Fiercely, and it's about finding these divine appointments in unexpected places. It's about celebrating in community and not in isolation. This is gonna be another thing that we're gonna see because, you know.
Holidays, the traditional holiday image that [00:24:00] shows a family by the pool, doesn't it? Having escaped life. But why would I want to escape if I'm living according to God's rhythms? Holiday isn't about running from something. Biblical holidays about running to someone. Changing our perspective and doing that with community.
You know, we've discovered over the recent, uh, weeks, um, with Sharon's cancer that you can meet God literally anywhere, divine appointments. These moad dims aren't limited to perfect circumstances or plan to retreats. They happen in hospital waiting rooms, in disrupted plans in seasons that look nothing like what we expected.
And over the next four weeks, we're gonna explore how biblical festivals teach us how to carry less, find community, embrace impermanence, and practice [00:25:00] the ultimate reset. Yes, these aren't ancient rituals, but live in practices for modern burnouts. So here's my challenge this week. Instead of viewing disruptions as stealing your rest, ask God, is there a divine appointment in here?
I didn't plan this, but is, are you writing something different, uh, behind the scenes and start noticing the threefold rhythm already in your life or where it's missing may be. And in that practice, gratitude, not just when plans work out, but especially when they don't. Because this is my experience, right over the last few months, very difficult times, crazy times.
Life has had a lot of disruption. But in that I'm starting to understand more and more the threefold rhythm of rest and recovery that God has put down, and that doesn't need me to be on a plane [00:26:00] because God could care less about the plane. And in that there is a gratitude that rises up from deep within your spirit that changes the perspective of how you see life.
And it's a beautiful thing because you know when life rewrites or some are plans. Maybe that's not God taking something away. Maybe he's inviting you into sacred rhythms that no circumstance can steal.
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