Receiving the Sabbath as a Gift

Fridays at a thirst for God we focus on Sabbath, carving out space for God, for rest:

Spring dances in, high and lifted up, waving scepters of gold. Gilded Day bounds free from the east, rising tentatively above slim, blue line of clouds that scurry. Birds chirp. Airplane drones, pretending a sun didn’t rise!

I watch….. still.  Cobwebs emerge, necklaced with dew, on shiny leaves.  Last year’s corn wears shadows well.  Trees blaze, red, gold: now buckets of yellow. Rainbow colors tremble, immodest across bluish sky: breathless peach–purple thunder.

Raucous crows announce “fiesta”!  Sun lavishes painterly light with good cheer. Today, seems overladen with possibilities!  Shadows are, quite simply, disappearing.  All of them. Inside and out.  “You are here!”

And still I watch.  Morning is secure now: full bodied and relentless in bright patchworks. Spring in Michigan.  A coolish breeze reminds me– scatters last year’s leaves in a dervish across emerald grass.

Spring brings crisp, bold mornings, and still-cool fireplace-kind-of-evenings. Mittens are put away.  Garden goods “pop”.  Glad earth turns.  Evenings stretch longer now, and Sun stretches out its’ bedtime.

Gifts of the morning, gifts of the evening.  How many do I miss, and why?  No reason passes muster!  These Sabbaths I will receive, or feel the loss to my soul.

And so, it is brief, but I claim this gift…this Sabbath.  I savor, and I pray, because I can, and not because I must.  “Multicolored gift of God, do your deep and soundless work in my soul.”

Linda Andersen

Where do you go to receive true rest?