Sabbath.

Today, I met with my professor about my summer school classes. I got my new syllabi and felt so overwhelmed with everything that has to be done before June 19, when the class is over...you know...7 days after we get married? why did I agree to Summer I???

We just finished with tests and papers but somehow we all found ourselves stressed to the max today...what is wrong with this picture? 

So after hearing about my countless interviews I have to conduct, reading reflections to write, curriculum to write, and a final 15-page all-encompassing paper, we came to the subject of my second summer school class....

sabbath.


Even the word leaves me feeling like I just took a half hour warm bubble bath with candles and my favorite book.

I am to read Wirzba's book on Sabbath and conduct 3 sabbaths and report my findings. Here are some of my favorite excerpts from the book so far...

"Rather than taking a "break" from frenetic, self-obsessed ways of living, the Sabbath is a discipline and practice in which we ask, consider, and answer the questions that will lead us into a  complete and joyful life."

"Could it be that our anxiety and aggression, our desire to exert total control and exact maximum profit, flows from a basic inability to trust in God's beneficence and care?"

"To forget or deny Sabbath is thus to withhold our lives from their most authentic purposes in God. It is to claim that our worrisome ways are better or count more than the intentions of God."

"Rest is not simply about stopping. When we stop from our work, what we are really doing is exhibiting a fundamental trust and faith in the goodness and praiseworthiness of God. We cannot delight in God's provision for us if we are at the same time worried about whether or not God cares for us." 


These are just a few of the sentences that have impacted me so far in my reading of this book.
Clearly, this class has come at the time in my life where I need it the absolute most. In this time when I could become so absorbed and concerned with school and wedding and apartment decorating and flowers and shoes and necklaces and thank you notes from showers and packing...I will choose, rather, to focus on slowing down and praising Jesus and sabbath and delight and solitude. 

p.s. i went to dinner with amber tonight & afterward to a little anthro 60% off...not bad...not bad at all...

Rest, my friends.