Year of Sabbaths (Week 36): Fallow Ground

(photo from www.freeimages.com #1175312)

You may ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?” I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in. (Leviticus 25:20-22)

It was a beautiful, Saturday afternoon and it was designated for working in the garden. It was perfect. My wife and I were excited.  There would be much weeding, and mulching, and tilling. We had cleared our calendar and we had our plants.  And then we had company.

And the garden did not get planted.

Our company was a childhood friend of our oldest son.  Last year, he moved from the house next door to a house forty miles away.  He stayed for a sleep over. The rest of his family stayed into the night.

And the garden did not get planted.

There was an afternoon of fashioning Nerf-dart blow guns from PVC pipe and duct tape, not only for our son and his friend, but his younger sister and our two younger sons.  In the evening, we ate belated birthday cake and played night tag.

And the garden did not get planted.

When I went to bed on Saturday night, I rationalized that my Sabbath had started Saturday afternoon, included blow-dart making, cake, and night tag, and would wrap up Sunday after church.  "I will still be able to plant the garden tomorrow," I said to myself as I fell asleep.

On Sunday morning, our son's friend accompanied us to church.  After worship, we came home and had lunch.  I looked out at the kitchen window towards the garden, sitting there...taunting me.  Then, some other friends came over and brought their daughter with them for a visit. Their daughter and our middle son have been fast friends their whole lives.  It was a good visit.  Our Sabbath was extended as our children played happily.  The adults talked and talked.  Time went quickly and soon, it was deep afternoon.  The waning sun was casting waxing shadows over the unplanted garden when our friends said goodbye.

In these last few hours of daylight, my wife and I, rested and filled-up, made our way to the untamed plot of land we envisioned as a garden. We broke ground. We weeded.  But there was still much work to be done. 

And the garden still was not planted.

And it is okay.  The Lord has promised that when we stop, He will provide.  There will be enough time. There will be enough money. There will be enough visits with good friends and the growing of deep relationships with God and family.  He will provide for all of our needs...

Even if the garden never gets planted.

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.

A Year of Sabbaths (Week 35): Training Wheels

(Photo from www.freeimages.com # 9894421)

Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 

So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath."

(Mark 2:27)

I find these words of Jesus interesting, freeing, and challenging.  

Jesus and His disciples had just been rebuked for picking grain by the Pharisees...on the Sabbath no less! The Pharisees were very concerned with keeping the law and picking grain was simply not an acceptable Sabbath activity.  However, Jesus reminds them, the goal is not keeping the law but rather the law keeping us.  

....sort of like training wheels.

I remember when our youngest son first started riding a bike.  It was a very little bike and the training wheels kept him upright, but they also kept him slow. His bigger brothers were whizzing by and whooping it up.  He kept at it. His legs got stronger. Then, one day when he was still much too small in my opinion, he asked me to take them off.  I had a hard time arguing with him.  After all, I knew that riding a bike with training wheels was not the goal.  

So, I took the training wheels off and steadied the bike as he got in position. With feet on the pedals, I gave him a push.  He was off! I ran along side of him for a while and then rebuked him for taking off the pedals.

No. I didn't rebuke him...I cheered wildly as he whizzed by and whooped.

He needed the training wheels for a season.  They served their purpose.  But on this day, he needed them off. And on that day so long ago, Jesus and the disciples were hungry.  

I believe that the Sabbath, the twenty-four hour-Sabbath, is important.  It is like spiritual training wheels.  I also believe that we can take them off if we are hungry. 

No worries if we do because if we have practiced, if we have kept at it for a few weeks or for a few years, the legs of our Sabbath-keeping have become stronger.  We will find that we are seeking Sabbath moments throughout our week as well as on the weekend.  Furthermore, we will know if it is a twenty-four hour rest we need or a week-long vacation.  We will know if we need a nap or if we need to get up from the sofa and help our spouse build some bookshelves for the Lego room. 

It's okay to violate the law once in a while, we just don't make a habit of painting the barn or doing the laundry on the Sabbath. We try not to justify unfaithfulness.  After all, there are some things that can just wait. 

Stopping isn't the goal of the Sabbath, it is the start.  Renewing our relationship with the Lord of the Sabbath and celebrating our relationship with Him and those in our part of His kingdom is the goal...with wild whizzing and whooping.  And it all starts by stopping.

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.

A Year of Sabbaths (Week 34): Up at Night

(Picture painted by Jennifer Snook, 4/13/2015)

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, 

who for the joy set before him endured the cross, 

scorning its shame,

 and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

(Hebrews 12:2)

I had a sleepy Sabbath this week.  It is hard to rest when someone you love is sick.  

He may have been suffering through allergies, or a cold, or both...but on Saturday night, our middle son was miserable with a bad cough.  It was keeping him up and he was upset. "I don't want to miss church tomorrow," he said. I didn't want him to miss church, either. He loves worship and adores his Sunday school teachers. They have class in the church tower. It is pretty awesome.

I wanted to make it better. I wanted to take his cough away. But there wasn't anything I could do.  So I just sat on his bed and held his hand.  We talked until he calmed down and was finally able to sleep.  And, finally, he did.  Before I went back to bed, I watched him a while longer.

I found myself thinking about God, sitting up with his sick children, watching them cough and suffer through life, unable to rest until He did something about it.  The difference between God and me, I mused (at least, one of many of the differences between God and me!) is that God could actually do something to relieve the suffering of His children. He could come and take away the cough. Jesus could come and make us completely healthy and remove all sickness so that we would never worry again about suffering through another sleepless night. While He was at it, Jesus could heal everyone, not only physically, but emotionally, and spiritually...and remove all selfish desire so that there would be peace and joy throughout the world.  Jesus could do it.

But He hasn't...not yet.

Instead, Jesus came as one of us. Certainly, there were those times that He performed miraculous deeds...but mostly, He just worked with wood.  Then, He began to tell stories in a northern accent to fishermen who had told a whopper or two themselves.  Jesus knew hunger and thirst and wept for the loss of a friend.  After a while, Jesus walked to Jerusalem where He surveyed His Kingdom from a cross, ascended into heaven, and "sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."  Jesus did all of this, it seems, so that he could go to each and every one of His children who was miserable and suffering and hold their hand and talk until they found rest. That gave Him great joy.

All I could do for my own son was sit up and talk. I didn't make the news or get my star in Hollywood, but maybe it meant something to my son.  In the morning, Sabbath came sweetly and I entered the joy of my rest and our son was able to go to church and visit with Jesus.  

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.

A Year of Sabbaths (Week 33): Out of Gas

(Photo from www.starwars.wikia.com)

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

(Psalm 23:4)

Our four year old son sighed, hung his head low, and said, "I'm out of gas." In that multi-verdant rain forest, he looked, I thought, a bit like an Ewok.  Maybe not quite as happy.

Our family was spending a couple of days in Northern California looking for some really big Redwoods.  (These secret Redwoods we sought were reported to be even bigger than normal Redwoods and their location was undisclosed.) Our two older boys were really getting in to the adventure...hiking trails, spanning streams, and pouring over maps. Our youngest, though, had experienced about all the adventure that he needed in his little life.

For him, the quest for the giant trees had become a soggy and senseless schlepp; not only was he out of gas, he didn't really see the point.  Gigantic trees didn't seem like such a big deal when even the ferns towered over his head as he stumbled over slippery rocks and around gigantic logs.

So we stopped.  We stayed. We had lunch in a hollow tree.  We quit looking for the secret trees and saw the beautiful scenery all around us.  After a while, our sojourn was over and our littlest explorer had a bit more gas in his tank.  At least enough to make it back to the car.

As Christians, I believe that we stop, sometimes, because we are exhausted about the prospect of continuing the journey and scrambling over one more fallen log.  We are out of gas from too much activity and not enough sleep. Sometimes we are exhausted by Holy Week. Or yard work.  Or painting the basement.  Then it is easy. We stop and take a nap.  We have a good lunch in a hollow tree and we are good to go.  At least for the rest of the week.

But sometimes we are exhausted because we see the way forward and it seems so utterly pointless and dark. In fact, we don't really see the point.  It is a deep darkness to look at your life and see it as one big, senseless schlepp.  A nap just isn't going to make that big of a difference.

However, it is then, I think...especially then...that we really need to stop. It is then that we need to be reminded that our lives don't have meaning because we have successfully discovered the secret trees. Our lives have meaning because we realize that in the midst of the quest, we don't have to be afraid...even if we utterly fail. Even if we run completely out of gas.  After all, there are still some pretty cool things to look at even in the shadows.  A friend of mine said, "You know, if there are shadow, there has to be light."  The Lord is with us.  In fact, He promised to always be with us and give us comfort. And that is gas in our tank.

By the way, the next day, our family found the really, really, really BIG trees! They are gigantic, and they are still a secret.

Church stopping. Less doing. More being.