A Year of Sabbaths (Week 51): Pulling on Pants

(Photo by Emily Lucima, www.freeimages.com #1188207)

My soul is feasted as with marrow and fat, 

and my mouth praises Thee with joyful lips, 

when I think of Thee upon my bed, 

and meditate on Thee in the watches of the night;

for Thou hast been my help, 

and in the shadow of Thy wings I sing for joy.

My soul clings to thee; Thy right hand upholds me. 

(Psalm 63:1-5)

I have a hazy memory of pulling on my mother's pant leg in the grocery store.  I must have been very little because I was eye-level with my mother's shoes and the lower half of her pant leg. I was absolutely convinced I had found her and, because I needed her attention in the cereal aisle, I tugged.  Unfortunately, these were not my mother's pants!  I was mortified and ran away, but I didn't stop.  I kept on pulling on pant leg after pant leg and eventually I found my mother. We connected, and I was so happy!

The same is true of our relationship with God.  There are different pant legs that we can pull on to connect.  Sometimes it is singing praises "with joyful lips".  Sometimes it is thinking about God "on my bed", reading His Word and meditating on God "in the watches of the night", perhaps with a good book.  Sometimes it is giving thanks for God's help when we "rested in the shadow of thy wings".  Sometimes it is one thing. Sometimes it is another.  

Last week, for me, it was attending a leadership conference for business professionals hosted by Willow Creek  Community Church.(www.willowcreek.com/summit). 

To me, it sounded like death. I'm not a business professional and I didn't want to go and I certainly 

didn't want to pay.  However, a good friend was so excited about going that he went on and on about 

how awesome and life-changing this conference had been for him in years past that I didn't feel like I 

could let him down and say, "No."  Furthermore, my wife was going  and I thought that at least it would

be fun to spend two days with her. So I stopped what I was doing, paid my fee, took two vacation

days, and went.  

One of the things that I have been learning about Sabbath is that stopping is only the beginning.  In this

case, stopping meant that I had pulled the pant leg of God.  We connected in ways that were brand new

to me and I was so happy!

Let me be clear. This wasn't the normal way I connected with God.  Usually, I find reading a good book

or attending worship, or listening to music, or kayaking connects me to God.  But, in listening to 

executives of major companies, pastors of giant churches, a prison warden, a CPA, and a comedian, I 

found that God was speaking deep into my heart and I was feasting as with "marrow and fat".  It was 

rich and I am still processing what took place in that encounter.

The Psalmist sings, "My soul clings to thee; they right hand upholds me." I've always known that. Now, 

I have felt it.  It's real and I want more of it. And it all starts with stopping...and sometimes pulling a few

pant legs.

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.

A Year of Sabbaths (Week 50): Sabbath Within Your Gates

(Photo by Steve Knight, www.freeimages.com #1547724)

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor you male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

(Exodus 20:8-11)

Last weekend, I went to the wedding of a good friend. It was a beautiful and joyous occasion.  He's a great guy and I am really happy for him and for his bride and for their dog. In addition, there were many old friends at the wedding, many I hadn't seen in years. It was great to get caught up and, in some cases, meet their children.  After the wedding, there was supper and cake...no mowing of the lawn and no dishes.  It was a beautiful Sabbath day.

It reminded me that in the command to Sabbath, stopping is just the beginning.  In the original instructions, we see that it is not just a command to "not to". God's command to Sabbath is a subtle nudge for us to remember Creation.    And when we look at the Creation account, we see that God created us for community:

Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish

 in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, 

and over all the creatures that move along the ground." (Genesis 1:26, emphasis mine)

Sabbath involves the whole family...even animals, foreign exchange students, employees, and house staff if you have them. Anyone within your gates.  For someone like me, prone to reclusion, this is sometimes a little bit difficult.  I've been dealing with people all week!  Someone always wants a piece of me.  Sometimes, my perfect idea of Sabbath involves me getting away from everyone and definitely not reaching out and involving others.

However, the reality is that all of us have people in our lives that we have lost contact with, we have become sideways with, and those we just don't know as well as we should.  Sabbath is time for us to put down the paper and pick up the phone and make contact once again.  It's a time when we can bury the hatchet and spread the Balm of Gilead.  It's time for us to load up the kids and drive three hours to the wedding of a good friend and let the dishes soak in the sink and the lawn soak up the sun. Maybe we go to church, come home, sign off from social media, and spend real, face-to-face time with those within our gates.

The goal of Sabbath is not stopping, but stopping is where we begin. It is the launching pad that propels us forward and gives us space to reconnect with those we love, and those that loved us once.  

Church stopping. Less doing. More being.

A Year of Sabbaths (Week 49): Blazing Paddles

How precious is Thy steadfast love, O God!

Children take refuge in the in the shadow of Thy wings.

They feast on the abundance of Thy house,  and Thou gives to them drink from the 

River of Thy delights.

For with Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light do we see light. (Psalm 7-9)

I believe that the command to stop is God's dare for us to trust Him that everything we worry about will get done and the world will be okay even if we drop our responsibilities for a little while. I believe that Sabbath is also a promise that God makes that in stopping, we begin to reconnect with Him, reconnect with one another, and reconnect with ourselves.

For a while, I think I lost contact with the one who God created me to be.  It wasn't intentional. I think it was cumulative over time. I just focused on what I perceived others, including God, wanted me to do.  That has begun to change and one of the vehicles of that change is kayaking.  Whitewater kayaking.

Here in the blazing heat of mid-summer in the south-central plains, such a proposition may seem like a preposterous aberration. However, there is a stretch of whitewater, about two-hundred yards long, right here in town, approximately 10 minutes from where I work.  Yes! Whitewater!  And the last two days in a row, I have kayaked that whitewater in an exhilarating splash of coolness.  It was absolutely incredible. I even let out a, "Whoop!"  It was just a little, "whoop" shared between me, a turtle, and a couple of young ducks, but it was there and it was a miracle.

This part of my story began in college. One weekend, I met my sister in Jackson Hole for a couple of days of R and R.  We rode the tram, shared an embarrassing candlelight dinner (I guess our waiter thought we were a couple...I know, Les! Eww!) and we went whitewater rafting down the Snake River! The whitewater was the highlight.  It was there, over twenty years ago, that I fell in love with the idea of kayaking.  As our big raft bobbed non-stop downstream, I noticed a grizzled guy with a grey beard plying the waves and eddies of the Snake River and I thought, "Some day, that will be me."

Well, I'm becoming a little bit grayer all the time, but work and family have grounded me in the central plains, 1039 miles from Jackson Hole.  Don't get me wrong, I love the plains. I love the 360 degree horizons and the warmth of the people. I love that hunting, fishing, and sailing opportunities abound.  However, there is no Snake River. In fact, there is barely a riffle anywhere to be found.  The rivers and streams snake slowly over horizontal horizons.  So, imagine my delight when, a couple of years ago, right here in the middle of town, the city built a boat run adjacent to a fish ladder right next to a downtown dam! Most of the locals don't know what it is, but I have been plying that crepuscular river over my lunch hour the last two days.

It is exhilarating, for sure, but also somehow coalescent with the long latent dream.

I know, it may seem inconsequential, kayaking in the mid-west, but for me, it has been a River of Delights in which God is reminding me of who I was created to be-which, in turn, makes the things I have to do so much more doable.

Church Stopping. Less doing. More kayaking.

A Year of Sabbaths (Week 48): Downtime

(Photo from www.barrett-jackson.com.  I'll give mine a little wash and then post it.)

"But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself." - Philippians 3:20,21

Sunday was a good day. It was a day that God drew "all things to himself". In the morning, there was church and then home for a simple lunch of panini sandwiches and fresh fruit. In the afternoon, I took a nap, read a book, and received a lovely tennis lesson from a lovely tennis instructor. Dinner was cheese quesadillas and veggies followed by a family devo, popcorn, and a couple of episodes of Phineas and Ferb. Ah! Downtime.

Speaking of downtime, I have an old truck. It's a pick-up, but "truck" sounds way cooler. I bought it new twenty-two years ago this year.  It still has the original engine, but downtime is becoming more and more frequent. There are parts and patches here and there and even a little bit of duct tape holding it all together.  Today, it is getting a new radiator.  Someday, it will be a collector's item and get a frame-up restoration.  Until then, I'll keep it running as well as I can and keep planning on a little downtime now and then.

I'm getting older as well.  It's hard to admit, but I have a little scheduled downtime coming up this weekend.  I still have all my original parts, albeit some with patches and a little bit of duct tape, wire, and glue here and there holding it all together.  And someday, I will be a collector's item and get a frame-up restoration, a "new and glorious body".  Until then, I'll just keep everything running as wells as I can and keep planning for a little downtime now and then.

Church stopping. Less doing. More being.

A Year of Sabbaths (Week 47): Glitter

(Photo by Rachel Kirk @ www.freeimages.com*)

"Let the own days trouble be sufficient for the day." 

(Matthew 6:34b)

After some recent storms, I pointed to the beautiful sunset.  It really was beautiful . Our youngest son, Will, looked at the sunset and then looked at me laughing, "Someone must have picked up the glitter."

"Glitter" is Will's word for litter. I like it. 

"Are you saying that  because someone picked up their glitter, God gave us this sunset?" I asked.  Will nodded his head and smiled.  Will didn't need to know who had done the good deed, but he rejoiced in the result.  Will was happy in that moment for what God had done.  He saw God's blessing where I had missed it. Oh, I appreciated the beauty of the sunset. I could even appreciate the fact that God had made it happen and loved the conviction that someone had picked up their glitter.  I just didn't rejoice over it.

That sunset just wasn't on my list. 

You see, I have a twenty-year plan. I also have a ten-year plan,  five-year plan, and a one-year plan. I have a checklist for this week and a checklist for this day and the sunset wasn't on any of them.  Therefore, I kind of missed the blessing.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a work in progress. I'm not very good in the moment and I often miss the blessing right in front of me.  However, Sabbath is one of those tools God is using to do His work.  Sabbath forces me to put my twenty-year plan on hold along with the unfinished items on my week-long list and see the blessing in the moment. Instead of my worrying about what still needs to be done this week, I can let the days worries be "sufficient for the day"  and start picking up glitter.   After all, it's there, out of place in my structured life, and I have overlooked it all week.  

So, instead of the dishes, I can pick up the ball and play catch with the boys.  Glitter. Instead of the brush pile out by the greenhouse, I can pick up a cup of lemonade and sip it with my wife as we watch the bees busy in the garden. Glitter.And maybe tonight, after the sun has set and before I settle into bed, I can lift up my head and give thanks to God for all the beautiful glitter in my life.  I am convinced that when I do, it makes God happy, it blesses others, and it causes me to rejoice precisely because it isn't on my list.

* Will is also a big fan of Christmas decorations!

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.

A Year of Sabbaths (Week 46): Sabbath Resistance

(photo from www.freeimages.com #1214380)

The Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor is an Episcopal Priest 

who served the Parish for 15 years before becoming a Professor of Religion at Piedmont College. 

She has lectured at Yale, Princeton, and Harvard. She calls this piece, Sabbath Resistance 

“In his book JEWISH RENEWAL, Rabbi Michael Lerner says that anyone engaging in the practice of Shabbat can expect a rough ride for a couple of years at least. This is because Sabbath involves pleasure, rest, freedom and slowness, none of which comes naturally to North Americans. Most of us are so sold on speed, so invested in productivity, so convinced that multitasking is their way of life that stopping for one whole day can feel at first like a kind of death. As the adrenaline drains away, you can fear that your heart has stopped beating, since you cannot hear your pulse pounding in your temples anymore.

As you do no work, you can wonder if you are running a temperature, since being sick is the only way you get out of work. As time billows out in front of you, you can have a little panic attack at how much of it you are wasting, since time is not only money, but also the clock ticking on your life.

For reasons like these, plenty of us take an hour here or there and call it Sabbath, which is like driving five miles to town and calling it Europe. Two hours on a Friday afternoon is not enough, Lerner says. We need ten times longer than that to calm down enough to draw a deep breath. We need ten times ten to trust the saving rhythm of Sabbath without worrying that our own ambitions will yank the rug of “rest” out from under us. “You haven’t had the experience,” he says, “until you’ve tried doing it for the full 25 hours, and doing it for a year or two minimum.

I’ve been doing it for seven years now, which is how I know the Rabbi is right. For the first couple of years, I paced as much as I rested. Every few hours, I caught my mind posing inventive questions. If I enjoyed yard work, was it really work? Was browsing a mail-order catalog really shopping? By year three, I had come to count on Sabbath the same way I count on food or breath. I could work like a demon the other six days of the week as long as I knew the seventh was coming. For the first time in my life, I could rest without leaving home.

With sundown on the Sabbath, I stopped seeing the dust balls, the bills and the laundry. They were still there, but they had lost their power over me. One day each week, I lived as if all my work were done. I lived as if the kingdom had come, and when I did, the Kingdom came, for 25 hours at least. Now, when I know Sabbath is near, I can feel the anticipation bubbling up inside of me. Sabbath is no longer merely a good idea, or even a spiritual discipline for me. It is an experience of divine love that swamps both body and soul. It is the weekly practice of eternal life, marred only by the fact that I do it alone.

In its community form, Sabbath is not only about rest, but also about resistance. Each time it appears in the Torah, the commandment limits the exploitation of others as well as the exhaustion of the self. When you stop working, so do your children, your animals and your employees, even if they do not believe in your God. You believe in your God, so they get the day off. By interrupting our economically sanctioned social order every week, Sabbath suspends our subtle and not so subtle ways of dominating one another on a regular basis. The lion is restrained from making a profit on the lamb, who may still choose to lie down for a Sabbath nap alone, but is free from the fear of waking up as lamb chops, at least on this one day.

If we paid as much attention to Leviticus 25 as we do to Leviticus 18, then we might discover that God is at least as interested in economics as in sex. Real rest involves all creation: freeing slaves, forgiving debts, restoring property and giving the land every seventh year off. Leviticus 25 shows divine concern for grapes, for God’s sake; it promises both the tame and wild animals in the land enough to eat, along with the hired hands who have time to play horseshoes during the year that the tractors stay parked in the barn. While there are a lot of yard signs supporting the Ten Commandments in the rural county where I live, I do not know a single farmer who keeps the Sabbath holy by giving the fields their hard earned Sabbaticals.

Where there is money to be made, there is no rest for the land, nor for those who live in it. Developers bulldoze the laurels by the river where the raccoons taught their babies how to fish. An entire pine forest comes down to produce the paper for this week’s Eddie Bauer catalogue. People who have already run out of closet space work overtime to pay the interest on their average $9000 credit card debts, while economic predators send teenagers applications for their own pre-approved cards in the mail. No resistance to such ravenousness will come from those who are heavily invested in its revenue. The resistance will have to come from elsewhere, from those who live by a different rhythm because they worship a different God.

This is my growing edge, where Sabbath is concerned, and I cannot do it alone. God did not give this Sabbath commandment to a person, but to a people, knowing that only those who rested together would be equipped to resist together. To remember the Sabbath is to remember what it means to be made in God’s image and, when Sabbath ends, to join God in the holy work of mending the world.”

A Year of Sabbaths (Week 45): What Do You Do?

(photo from www.recipebridge.com)

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. (Romans 8:16)

Last week, our family made the annual trek from the southern plains to the northern plains for family camp. The typical day of camp starts with a family gathering with singing and fun. Then, the adults and children are separated for age-adjusted teaching and fun.  The structured time of the morning is followed by an afternoon of free time with the family.  The day ends with more teaching and fun after a delicious dinner.  It's a blast and our whole family looks forward to it every year.  

It's also a little bit stressful being around hundreds of strangers. I don't know anything about them and they don't know anything about me.   Incontrovertibly, I find myself sitting with someone I don't know at dinner and the conversation goes something like this:

Stranger: Wow! Awesome chicken tonight.  Are those real capers?

Me: I think so. I really love those pickled flower buds.

Stranger: What do you do for a living?

Me: That's a tough question. I am a pastor, but I'm not currently serving a church.  I am a writer, but I don't have any published works...wait! I do write a blog and I did publish a magazine article. I have a couple of books that I have shopped around but, so far, I haven't had my really big break.  I moonlight at a local hospital to help make ends meet.  I like sheep. (!) What do you do? 

Stranger: I'm an orthopedic surgeon.

Me: Oh. Those are really good capers.

Maybe I should have just answered, "pastor" and left it at that.  After all, what I do really isn't who I am. Who I am is much more interesting after all; I am the child of God; the Creator of the universe and the Savior of the world! Everything else I do is sort of secondary to that.  

I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill.  The orthopedic surgeon was a good guy, dedicated to his family and his calling and was just making conversation.  We did talk a little about kayaking, but I left feeling like I could have done better.  And I know it will happen again...for whenever two or three are gathered and don't know each other's name...it happens. But maybe there is a better way for me to handle that inevitable conversation...

Stranger: Wow! Awesome chicken tonight.  Are those real capers?
Me: I think so. I really love those pickled flower buds.
Stranger: What do you do for a living?
Me: I'm a pastor...I do a little church consulting. I have been married 16 wonderful years. I'm the father of three totally awesome boys. I love to write and kayak and I am interested in animal husbandry. I dabble in medicine.  What do you do?
Stranger: I'm an orthopedic surgeon. I have also been married for sixteen years and I am the father of three great girls.  I'm thinking about buying a sheep farm in Ohio.
Me: Cool.  To God be the glory! Brother, let me tell you about Hampshire sheep...

Church Stopping. Less doing. More being.