On Writing and Rest
It is helpful to plan your rest.
Quiet discoveries are why any effort to write something is worth the struggle.
Sometimes, frankly, you discover what you are writing actually isn’t worth the hassle, and you bank the fragment in your junk yard.
Perhaps later you will return to scavenge parts for something else, or you will think of another route to your destination.
When time permits you can just doodle or talk to yourself.
This is like mining for gold with the understanding that there are a whole lot more rocks out there than gold.
Also you have to keep your eyes open to the unexpected.
You might unearth a diamond, or a precious memory long forgotten.
But if you like spending time in a quiet activity and you have caged the urgent matters clawing for attention, it’s a good way to enjoy time.
Sort of like fishing.
It’s not a waste of time, but it might be unproductive — at least in the moment…
Which brings me to the particular point of this reflection.
Our rushed lives and our determination, no matter the cost, to accomplish goals (although important at a basic survival level) leave us empty. And this emptiness, if ignored too long, sucks out the essence of our lives.
We end up living void of joy.
Hollow.
This is why God codified the Sabbath into his Ten Commandments. It’s number four.
Christians often ignore this one.
They justify doing so by saying that Jesus died on the cross and so replaced the requirements of keeping the law.
If this is what you think, I think you are missing out.
It’s sort of the minimalist perspective that says all I have to know is the least about this whole religious thing, because I’m saved.
You might be saved.
I hope you are, but if this is where you leave your thirst to know God better, and by knowing God, discovering who you really are, then in a sense, you are accepting a future of meaningless suffering.
Sure you might be that one lost sheep the shepherd saved by leaving the ninety-nine others quietly grazing in safety, but this means you were living a much harder life than the others who elected to actually relax and not to wander off.
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.
But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.”
He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.
For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
