Walter Brueggemann writes in Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now that when God gives the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai, including the one to observe the Sabbath,

God invites the ones at Sinai to a new life of neighborly freedom in which Sabbath is the cornerstone of faithful freedom. Such faithful practice of work stoppage is an act of resistance. It declares in bodily ways that we will not participate in the anxiety system that pervades our social environment. We will not be defined by busyness and by acquisitiveness and by pursuit of more, in either our economics or our personal relations or anywhere in our lives. (Brueggemann 32)

On the Sabbath, we remember that we receive, as well as work and give. We take time to remember and spend time with the God who created us, and who creates all things, including the food we eat and the air we breathe and the time we inhabit. Even though what we do matters, the world’s running does not depend on us.

We also take time to rest. This gracious God we have, and all of the gifts we have—we can rest in those. We can be grateful and we can simply enjoy the gifts.

So this Sunday, let us spend time with God, and let us enjoy our blessings, and let us rest!

I’ll see you in church—

Becky

Prayer

A Blessing for when things don’t add up, by Kate Bowler

Blessed are you who say:

This did not add up.

I had hoped these choices I made,

the life I tried so hard to pick,

would add up to something

Meaningful.

But now I’m left without many choices at all.

Left wondering . . . did I pick right?

Did I waste my days?

What should I have done differently?

This limited life is what it means to be human.

In our failures and bad, bad, math.

In our best intentions and hardest work,

In our waylaid hopes and far off dreams.

In the love that is never ever too late to give or receive.

Maybe ‘success’ and ‘happiness’ can mean something different now.

On the other side of a life changed.

Where minutes become moments.

And there will never be enough

Sunsets or handholds or jokes shared.

Where minutes become moments.
And there will never be enough
sunsets or handholds or jokes shared.

but there is never ever too much love.