Good morning…
On the seventh day—with the canvas of the cosmos completed—God paused from His labor and rested. Thus God blessed day seven and made it special—an open time for pause and restoration, a sacred zone of Sabbath-keeping, because God rested from all the work He had done in creation that day (Genesis 2:2-3, VOICE).
“God’s rest on the seventh day is a model for the kind of Sabbath rest He wants for His people,” says the footnote.
“The truth is, sabbath is a discipline that will mess with you, because once you move beyond just thinking about it and actually begin to practice it, the goodness of it will capture you, body, mind and spirit,” says Ruth Haley Barton on page 133 in Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation.
“You will long to wake up to a day that stretches out in front of you with nothing in it but rest and delight,” she continues. “You will long for a simple way to turn your heart toward God in worship without much effort. You will long for a space in time when the pace is slow and family and friends linger with one another, savoring another’s presence because no one has anywhere else to go.”
“You will long to sit on your own couch or on your own deck because it is yours, a gift from God that often gets overlooked in the rush of things,” Barton explains. “You will long for the day when you can crawl back into bed for an afternoon nap, which is all the more delicious because on this day you know that you are doing exactly what God wants you to do.”
“You will long for that leisurely walk or bike ride,” she concludes. “You will long for the experience of preparing your favorite foods and sharing them with people you love. You will long to read a book for pleasure. You will long to light candles and read Scripture and thank God from the bottom of your heart. You will long to feel the quietness and peace settle over your house and your family as you enter into a different way of being together in God’s presence. You will long for a few others who understand the beauty of sabbath time and will practice it with you. You will long for a community whose traditions enable you to honor the sabbath rather than making it a day of Christian busyness. You will long for a rhythm of working and resting that you can count on.”
In class this week, we wrestled with the fact that, as the worldwide pandemic loosens its grip, our schedules are filling back up. Will Sunday just become a “second Saturday” for our family? Sports practices and games. “Have-to” yard work and demanding home improvement projects. Shopping, rushing, cramming the day full. Or will Sunday become an open time for pause and restoration, a sacred zone of Sabbath-keeping?
“And then there was this sentence from Wayne Muller’s book Sabbath that kept buzzing around in my head like a pesky fly buzzing against a windowpane,” writes Barton. “If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath – our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us.”
If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the LORD honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;
then you shall take delight in the LORD,
and I will make you ride upon the heights (Isaiah 58:13-14).
In your cluttered corner of the cosmos, pausing to honor our Creator for this full Sabbath day, what restorative things do you long to do with God and your loved ones?
…Sue…
