Earlier this summer, the Young Adult Fellowship at Marble invited me to give a talk on "summer spirituality." We discussed the idea of the Creation and God's taking a day of Sabbath rest and God's command of us to do the same thing on a regular basis. Some of us who grew up in traditions with very clear Sabbath expectations reminisced and shared with others who are trying to learn about "keeping the Sabbath" in the present tense. The upshot of my presentation was to encourage each of them to use the summer to cultivate their own Sabbath practice -- not only on the first day of the week, but during special set aside moments in the day.
Now that was in early June and now it is early August. Wow!! Where did the summer go? Have you enhanced your Sabbath spiritual practice? Or, has the summer whizzed by you? I am in the "whizzed by" category.
Did you hear this story about a man in Berlin?
"A German man forgot his car after filling it up at a petrol station, police said Friday. "He just forgot about it and walked off home," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Wuppertal. After the car had sat blocking the pump for about an hour, a woman working at the petrol station became suspicious and alerted authorities. Officers contacted the man from Remscheid, who came straight back to fetch the vehicle. He had paid to fill up the car before walking off."
I feel like I could be him, at least several days a week. My own running around and busy-ness often makes me lose my keys, forget my cell phone or misplace my point in a conversation. Does that ever happen to you? This guy, God bless him, and I both need to digger deeper to consecrate ourselves to God's Sabbath purposes us.
Genesis 2:2-3: by the seventh day, God completed the work, which God had done, and rested on the seventh day from all the work which God had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because in it God rested from all the work, which God had created and made.
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