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Posts from the ‘Sunday’ Category

Mar 17

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The Wholeness of this Day

“God does not erase our losses, those empty places in our lives, but he does something almost more miraculous. He fills the loss with a sign of his presence.”― Christie Purifoy, Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons

“If I want to abide in this day, to make my home in it, I must only tear my eyes from tomorrow and look around. For there is a wholeness to this day that I do not want to miss.”― Christie Purifoy, Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons

Root and reach.
Rest and flow.
Ease and effort.
Find the sacred holy ground of this day.
Remain here to notice, to pay attention.
In deep long gazes.
In the lift from laughter.
In the small adding up to a good life, moments at a time.
And for honed senses to witness and partake in the present.

“Our lives are stories built of small moments. Ordinary experiences. It is too easy to forget that our days are adding up to something astonishing. We do not often stop to notice the signs and wonders. The writing on the wall. But some days we do.”― Christie Purifoy, Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons

Oct 15

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Sunday-ing

“Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.”― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“We live in a culture that celebrates activity. We collapse our sense of who we are into what we do for a living. The public performance of busyness is how we demonstrate to one another that we are important. The more people see us as tired, exhausted, over-stretched, the more they think we must be somehow … indispensable. That we matter.”― Joan Halifax, Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet

One day of seven.
An invitation to rest, to not doing, to not produce.
To set aside efficiency.
A rejection of busy and of the worshipped “to do” list.
To quiet.
To be still.
To wander.
To enter Kairos time rather than Chronos time.
Off the watch into the moment, deep time, flow.
To listen in the slowness.
To ask rather than answer.
To unknow and rediscover.
Counter cultural.
Radical.
Be radical.
Enter Sabbath rest.
Let Sunday do it’s work in you.

“The Hebrew word Shabbat means ‘to stop.’ But it can also be translated ‘to delight.’ It has this dual idea of stopping and also of joying in God and our lives in his world. The Sabbath is an entire day set aside to follow God’s example, to stop and delight.”― John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World

Jul 30

Sunday Slow

“Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.” – Philibert Joseph Roux

“Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sunday slow.
Enter the flow.
Timing.
Do not wait too long.
Do not go too fast.
Find the rhythm and ease.
The music of a new day.
Sacred ground.
Dance.
Welcome all that comes your way.
Sunday and each day.

“Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.” – Marilynne Robinson

Apr 23

Rhythms of Rest

“God’s creation is a life-giving inhale for all of us, and Sabbath is the exhale.”― Shelly Miller, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World

“A life built upon Sabbath is contented because in rhythms of rest we discover our time is full of the holiness of God.”― Shelly Miller, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World

Put down busy for one day.
Whether the traditional Sabbath of Saturday or Sunday, pause, rest, take an extended break.
Weave breaks through each day too, however brief, to carry forward.
In the slowing, we see what is actually before us, the full picture not mere struggle and ordinary.
The beauty, blessings, joy, awe, wonder, peace, delight, play.
In the slowing, we hear what’s in us.
A soft whisper guiding, holding, reassuring.
In the slowing, we enter ebb and flow, rhythm and current.
Holy. Sacred. Wide-open spaces.
Exhale.

“Rest provides fine-tuning for hearing God’s messages amidst the static of life.”― Shelly Miller, Rhythms of Rest: Finding the Spirit of Sabbath in a Busy World

Feb 21

Come, Sit for a While

“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.” – Alice Walker

For so long
Day after day
Running fast and furious
Checking the box
New list, new boxes
Task after task
Problem solved, another takes its place
Transactional living

For who?
For what?
Why?
To What end?
Ask the questions
Inventory what stays and what must go and then release it

Money
Power
Ego
Legacy
Expectations and assumptions
Quantity over quality
Examine how time is being spent or given

On sabbath, God’s day, He calls us to rest as He did after 6 days creating the world
The Author of Life, asks us to pause
To ask the questions, to listen, to pull off the racetrack to rest, nothing to check off, no problem to solve, to just be so we can carry Sunday into the week

God chases us as we chase everything and everyone but Him
Patiently, lovingly, mercifully, gracefully, generously
He chases, calls and waits for us to see Him in the threads of ordinary moments, always present, whispering, “Come, sit for a while”

You have earned your rest
There is nowhere to go
Nowhere to be than right now
On a bench, taking in the depth and beauty of this very moment
Sunday was created to linger, to laugh, to lounge, to live so the rest of the week makes sense and is lived on purpose, gratefully and with intent, not accidentally

Right here, right now.
Come, sit for a while.

“If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.” – Eugene H. Peterson