Sabbath Says

“It is a mysterious business, creating worlds out of words. I hope I can say without irreverence that anyone who has done it knows why Jehovah took Sunday off.” by Ursula LeGuin in The Language of the Night.

Like LeGuin, I am a writer, but I am certainly no writer like LeGuin. As important as it is for me to write six days, it is as important for me not to write one day. We creative types tend to vacillate between laziness and hypergraphia.

Of course, my creativity does not remotely approach that of the Almighty, but He is my example. God took a day off, and so do I.

Lately, in between magazine cycles, I’ve taken a few days off. It has been one of my few mental breaks of the last, oh, eight years. Unemployment, then precarious employment, then more unemployment, then surgery for one child, then a move, then surgery for another child, then my mom’s cancer, then three family members–including her–dying within 14 months.

I wish I were enough of a writer to create worlds. I’d even settle for creating a measly novel. At the moment, the best I can do is to create a few poems. And take a day to read authors like LeGuin and drink quarts of tea.

For all you Wacoans out there, we were among the original families who, back in 1999, started Antioch Community Church. If you’re not from Waco and don’t know the church’s reputation, it’s best known as that place where Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry–who were taken captive in Afghanistan in 2001–were from.

I just listened to a podcast that detailed the church’s origins, back to when Jimmy Seibert was the college pastor at Highland Baptist Church. My husband, John, and I go back to that era through the end of 2005, about 10 years (with a couple of hiatuses on our part).

Antioch was then and still is all about sending people to the nations. Since John and I knew that wasn’t our gig, what on earth were we doing there?

Learning. Growing. Maturing.

Even being the halfway-Christians that we always have been, it was exciting to hang out around the super-duper Christians of Antioch. Meeting on the parking lot was an adventure. Lifegroups were transformative. Church itself was as thrilling as any rollercoaster.

While we were there, we began to feel our own call–one very different from what our friends were hearing. John left his job in 2002 because he felt God told him to, and for the next three years, we never knew where the money was coming from or where we might be moving to. Eventually, he got on a new career track, and we ended up in Fredericksburg.

Almost five years later, we have still had trouble settling into a church. I have blamed this problem on the fact that there is nothing like Antioch here, but I think it’s deeper than that.

For much of my life, I had a difficult relationship with my family. Now that I’m an adult, I blame no one but myself. About a year after we moved here, my mom’s cancer came back, after a 23-year remission. Living closer meant that I could make day trips for her chemo appointments and other treatments.

The next three years were not about the existential Family of God, but my actual flesh-and-blood family. Learning to love them. To like them. To hang out with them. To eat and drink with them. The weekend before and the weekend after my mom died were filled with family from seven states and even more cities. Those days were both terrible and beautiful.

I believe that part of why we left Antioch and moved to Fredericksburg was so that I could be physically closer to my mom through her illness and death, and so that I could be emotionally closer to the rest of my family. Now that she’s gone, I find myself wanting to be with them more than ever.

Maybe now that I’m learning to love my actual family, I can learn to love the family of God. Which, hey, wasn’t that what Antioch was all about?

This is the first day that I don’t want to Sabbath. It isn’t about the work – it’s about God. I don’t want to be close to Him today. I don’t want to listen. I want to put my hands over my ears and shout, “LaLaLaLaLa” as loud as I can. I’d shake my head back and forth, too, if I thought it would help.

A week ago, I couldn’t get here fast enough. Now all that space looks oppressive.

Last week I spent some time studying Scripture on the subject, looking up all the verses on Sabbath, and I slammed my Bible shut. I mean, if Jesus broke the Sabbath, then why should I keep it? After the Gospels, the New Testament gets worse. It doesn’t mention it all until Hebrews. And who can understand that if you’re not Jewish?

I’m giving it up. I mean it this time.

(P.S. I wrote this five years ago)

(I wrote this a couple of years ago, and thought I’d posted it, but it was in the “drafts” folder).

“Come away, my lover, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the spice-laden mountains.” Songs 8:14

My parents live in a 40-year-old subdivision on what used to be the edge of Austin. Despite the traffic and sprawl, deer still roam freely through their front yard and the creek bed that cuts behind it. My mother recently emailed that a newly-born fawn had been left overnight, right in the center of their lawn.

I wish you could see the pictures. The fawn is curled into a ball, just a few steps from the front door. The grass is thick, but not tall enough to cover the baby deer. No trees provide shade or shelter. As my father took a series of photos, the fawn’s ears perked up. The rest of its body remained motionless.

My father says that a fawn will instinctively stay till until its mother returns. It trusts. It rests. It waits.

I am not like the fawn. If God doesn’t move fast enough for me, I set out on my own to track Him down.

What if the fawn had moved? It might have been struck by a car driven by a reckless teenager. It might have starved as it looked for food. At the very least, it might have been lost to its mother forever. It would probably have died.

Instead, the fawn waited almost six hours. The sun warmed the world. The wind whipped through the trees. The grass grew imperceptibly taller. And finally, the mother returned. The fawn followed eagerly out of my parents yard and into the creek bed behind their house.

The closest I come to the trust this fawn displayed is on Sabbath. It takes faith to stop. Will the world get along without me? Will the world want me back?

Unlike the fawn, I move more than my ears. I get up and walk around the yard, but there is a boundary across which I do not stray. I want my Lord to find me.

My mother said that since the fawn lay so still for so long, the grass retained an indentation of its presence. I hope my Sabbaths leave a permanent mark on my life. I trust that my Lover will come, no matter how long I have to wait.

I pray I am forever dented.

“My love is like a gazelle, graceful; like a young stag, virile. Look at him there, on tiptoe at the gate, all ears, all eyes – ready! My lover has arrived, and he’s speaking to me.” Songs 2:9-10

You know the Bible verse, “Pride goeth before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). Do you suppose the writer of Proverbs meant a waterfall?

My husband John and I took a hike this week in Rocky Mountain National Park. We went to a lake (Loch Vale) and spied a waterfall above it (Timberline Falls). Fun, right? The hiking guide said, “a fair amount of scrambling is required.”

I did OK until about halfway up, when I positively freaked out. But my dear, sweet husband knew how to deal with me. He knew that when fear raises its ugly head, pride will beat it every time.

“You can stay here,” he said. “I’ll go on up.”

That was all it took. I was not going to let my husband see a view without me. So I got myself up to the top and yes, it was worth it.

Pride may be a sin, but it’s an awfully useful one. Especially when you’re hiking.

I heard an interview with author Judith Shulevitz on npr’s “Fresh Air” about her book, “The Sabbath World.” I haven’t read it yet, but it’s next up .

Shelevitz was raised Jewish and is married to a Jewish man, but she states that she does not believe in God. Nevertheless, she does observe the Sabbath. And she loves it.

Much of the praise for this book comes from critics who confess to a secular view of the world. Even the product description reads, “Everyone curls up inside a Sabbath at some point or other. Religion need not be involved.”

Puzzling, huh? Not as much as you might think.

The Sabbath is intoxicating. Once you start, you can’t stop. Even if you don’t believe in the God who ordained it.

Now, I do believe, but sometimes I find the practice easier than the belief. Usually, the practice strengthens the belief, but sometimes — so help me, God — it stands in the place of belief.

Rather than beat myself (or Judith) over this paradox, I will simply marvel at a God who gave a command that can be so easily abused. Like freewill, the Sabbath is a gift that can draw us to our Creator, or away from Him. He is extravagant! He hands us a a massive inheritance and tells us, “Enjoy!” while knowing full well that we might squander the entire thing on wanton living and end up eating pig slop.

As Tim Keller would say, what a prodigal God!

When I had a plain ol’ cell phone, it was pretty easy to set it aside on Sabbath days. I could turn it to silent and literally forget about it. That was before I began carrying a palm-sized computer, otherwise known as an iPhone (and I have the original).

Here are a list of my justifications for why I continue to need it, even on my day off:

1) It’s my clock. Although I usually turn off the alarm on the Sabbath, I still need to look at it when my 14-year-old dog starts wandering the house so I can determine the time and decide whether or not to get up yet. 4:30 a.m.? No way.

2) It’s my weather guru. I think it’s genetic, because everyone in my family is obsessed with weather. I must know the temperature, wind speed, humidity, forecast, and check the radar. Then I must look at all those stats in Waco so that I can gloat. Then I check the weather in the cities and states where my friends and family live. Think that can count as praying for them?

3) It’s my flashlight. Whenever I finally get up, it is earlier than anyone else, except the dogs. I need the light of my iPhone to guide The Old Lady and the two Puppies safely outside where they can be fed. How would they ever find their way in the dark?

4) It’s my iPod. How can I play my “Sabbath playlist” without activating it via my iPhone? How can I download all those stimulating sermon podcasts, if I don’t tap them up?

5) It’s my email. Yes, I do check email (occasionally obsessively). Since I rest in the middle of the week and usually work on the weekends, it is necessary to see if something has come in. Often, a quick reply is all that’s necessary, but otherwise, it looks like I’m shirking my responsibility, which, of course, I am. But not today. I promise.

6) It’s my communicator. My son will still text me, no matter what day it is. My husband will still call me. And you know what? I want to talk to both of them.

7) It’s my alarm. I have two alarms. One is set for 5:05 a.m., when I usually wake up. The other is set for 5:05 p.m., when I start the new day. Observing the Sabbath has put me on Jewish time: sunset to sunset. That second alarm, labeled “Evenings,” signals the end of one thing and the beginning of another.

At the moment, my iPhone is snuggled in it’s cradle where it is playing Sara Groves’ latest album. I can ignore it a little while longer, until someone in my family (whether human or canine) needs me.