Week One: Wind Over Troubled Waters

"And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters." --Genesis 1:2

Our plan for Sabbath had become "formless and void."

Our plan to spend Sunday afternoon searching out a secret waterfall was sabotaged by a church meeting. Plan B was to have a Saturday Sabbath (it's been done before!) but I was suddenly called in to work, our middle son was invited to a friend's house to play, my wife had an afternoon hair appointment, and our youngest son has a birthday coming up and we needed to make some party preparations.

"Darkness was over the surface of the deep..."

In addition, there was a lawn to be mowed, chickens to be fed, and we were in the middle of our kitchen backsplash tiling project. We didn't know it then, but, the "Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters."  I was just grumpy and dark as I left for work.

When I came home from, we sat down and had dinner together as a family.  My wife had prepared another tasty and healthy meal for her family.  I was feeling a little better.  Afterwards, she joined me in cleaning up after dinner (this is usually my job) and we discussed how we could redeem this Sabbath for our family. The lawn could wait. The tiling could wait. The trip to the secret waterfall could wait. We decided, instead, to take those precious hours right after church, and before our meeting, to spend time individually with our kids. I played Legos with our oldest. My wife read to the youngest two. Then we rotated. I colored a sheep, a turtle, and a snail with our youngest and was soundly beaten in chess by our eight-year old!  The five of us discovered a beautiful garden spider living in our garden. It was a glorious afternoon.

And we began to feel the Spirit of God move.

The church meeting was at our home.  It went longer than we thought it would, but the boys were happily playing on their own, each having already had individual time with Mom and Dad. When the meeting was over, we talked, as a family, about our week.

Now, the Spirit was really moving.

We had a family devotion based on Psalm 8 and talked about how much bigger and better God is than we sometimes think. Each of us was given a challenge for the coming week to discover something that reminds us of how much bigger and better God is then we previously thought and be prepared to share that discovery next Sunday...after the trip to the waterfall.

The Spirit was palpable now!

I made some of my famous popcorn, and we watched a movie...well, I watched most of the movie and napped during part of it.  We tucked the kids in and went to bed so happy that I barely woke up during the lightning, the rain, and the wind last night.

After all, I knew that God was blowing over the surface of the waters.

Church Stopping. Less Doing. More Being.

Photo from www.sxc.hu #734846