Thursday, June 24th
.jpg)
I do like to cook, and I often enjoy the meals I cook. However I have also come to realize that eating something someone else has cooked can be a special treat full of surprises and new discoveries! It is the same for me with sermons. I enjoy the process of writing a sermon. And yet reading, or even better, listening to a sermon someone else has written can be a special gift that nourishes and fills me in a way my own sermons never can. The prospect of this is what led me to put Barbara Brown Taylor’s newest book, “Always a Guest” on my list of gift suggestions for Mother’s Day. And I am grateful that my son jumped on that idea.
In 1996 Taylor was named one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English-speaking world by Baylor University and “Always a Guest” is a collection of sermons she has given as a guest preacher for various congregations and gatherings. I have started the book and am reading it “one bite at a time,” reading one sermon and sitting with it, savouring it for a while before I let myself move on to the next. For me this is the only way to read Taylor. Her sermons aren’t just rich food for the spirit, they are food for the heart and mind as well. She is not just a renowned preacher, she is a gifted writer - the kind of writer who makes you just want to sit with a phrase as it washes over you.
Perhaps because I am getting ready to take a little time away from my work this summer, I found myself drawn to a sermon reflecting on the practice of Sabbath. Taylor talks about how taking a day each week to set down our work and step away from it can actually be, not just life-giving, but actually life-saving. In doing this we have the opportunity remember and experience the truth that God is actually God and we are not. And experiencing that regularly through the practice of taking a day of Sabbath rest helps us to grow in our trust in God and in God’s grace and generous provision. Taylor writes:
“The health of our Sabbath practice has everything to do with the health of our trust in God’s abundance. Those who walk away from their fields one day a week have faith that the fields will be there when they return.”
Barbara Brown Taylor,
“Always a Guest: Speaking of Faith Far From Home” p.77.
Sabbath keeping is pretty countercultural for most of us. Are you able to take time for Sabbath rest regularly? If you aren’t, perhaps you might want to ask God to help you to see what is keeping you from it. Feel free to ask God to help to change that so that you can find some time to just rest in the assurance that God has got you. It’s great if you can take a full day, but sometimes it’s easier to get started with just a few hours and that’s a good start that often leads to more!
And if you have developed the habit of taking time for Sabbath rest, how has that practice deepened your trust in God’s care for you? How has Sabbath rest helped you to experience God’s abundance?
Sometimes we think of Sabbath as a rule that should be kept, but that has never been God’s intent. God means for Sabbath time to be a gift to us, a gift we actually look forward to like I’m looking forward to my holidays. Sabbath is meant to be a gift of time in which we are restored and reconnected with the One who is the very source of life for us all.
May you look forward to a time for Sabbath rest this week, and may it be all that you hope.
Blessings,
Dianne