As I write this letter for Reaching Out, it is now just over 24 hours since Randy, Beth, Ian and Charlotte landed in New Zealand. Facebook updates confirmed their family’s safe arrival, and shared news of settling into their three-month home. As is to be expected, their first 24 hours in New Zealand was full of the kind of up front work that will allow them to rest in New Zealand: things like renting a car, buying school uniforms, and figuring out the Wi-Fi in their house.
As Randy and his family settle into this sabbatical time, we also are settling in to a new, temporary routine of church life without Randy immediately present. But, this time of “settling in” for us is not just a time of responding and adjusting to a sabbath time in our pastor’s life. There also is an opportunity for each of us to settle into a space where, together, we can explore the biblical notion of Sabbath, and individually and collectively discern the potential for Sabbath to hold meaning in our lives.
For many of us, Sabbath is a word we’ve heard from the time we first learned the Ten Commandments in Church School. Yet it is a word that in reality takes on little meaning in our contemporary lives. Modern amenities, such as 24-hour grocery stores and smart phones, make sabbath more of a sought-after hope than a daily, weekly, or even monthly reality. Expectation is ever before us: to be available, to be connected, to be busy. With tasks and responsibilities, and even opportunities, before us, we simply cannot stop. In his bookSabbath Wayne Muller writes: “In the relentless busyness of modern life, we have lost the rhythm between work and rest.”
My prayer is that we join Randy, Beth, Ian and Charlotte in the pursuit of recapturing this essential rhythm to life, that we might explore a biblical mandate so essential to wholeness that it was enjoyed by even God.
So, what does this look like? While there are no prescriptive answers, there are a range of traditional practices that might help us open a space in our lives for holy rest, to “a way of being in time where we remember who we are, remember what we know, and taste the gifts of spirit and eternity.”
In the coming months, the Spiritual Life Committee will offer a range of opportunities at ELPC for us to engage in an exploration of these practices together. There will be two book groups that will meet (one in August and one in September) to read, study and discuss two contemporary books on Sabbath. There will be opportunities for prayer, opportunities for retreat, and opportunities for Spiritual Direction. Additionally, there will be opportunities to rest from the routine of your life through mission, as well as through fellowship and worship together.
We are reminded that we are companions on this journey together, and we share the need for Sabbath-keeping in our lives. So let us share this time together. Let us encourage one another in the reclamation of sabbath space in our lives as we continue to encourage one another in faith, hope and love. Let us share our insights that we might learn from one another: with joy, with creativity. And with gratitude, let us remember the Sabbath.