sabbath invitations
meditations from the end of April
Sabbath-keeping is a form of mending. It’s mortar in the joints. Keep Sabbath, or else break too easily, and oversoon. Keep it, otherwise our dustiness consumes us, becomes us, and we end up able to hold exactly nothing.
Mark Buchannan
I forget to breathe. When I am trying deliberately to make it through the stretching the push and pull the noise a too-shallow breath hangs in my chest until the gentle reminder comes to simply breathe. Breathe. We are held up by the common grace of breath. We are held up by the capacity to hold invisible, essential air in our lungs, daily. As we take in, and give out, our given grace continually, we discover the miracle of our making: systems sustaining naturally if we let them do their work in and through our bodies, if we remember our beginning and whose breath fills us up.
One time in prayer I asked Jesus to show me His heart, so He took my hand and placed it on His chest. I got the impression of this soft, tranquil blue color and the words "fully at peace, fully at rest."
I watched Him, and, with my hand still resting on His heart, He was about His Father's business steadily, while His heart remained fully at peace and fully at rest.
Jesus prayed for you and me, "that they may be perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me." And He still lives, interceding. Jesus, the image of the invisible God, as Holy Spirit also groans in prayer with and for us.
Father God's love is sweeter than I yet know and more complete. The more I listen, the more I find Him loving.
from the dust you draw us up to yourself through yourself you draw near servant-king washing feet washing us with the water of your word this gift undeserved and given freely this gift is our peace