Sabbath

 

          Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. 
          For in six days the Holy One made heaven and earth,
          but rested the seventh day.
                              —Exodus 20.8, 11

               Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy.
               Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt,
               and the Holy One your God brought you out.
                              —Deuteronomy 5.12, 15


Not a day of piety and churchy things.
A day of emptiness.
God is doing the work. You are not.
You think you are more indispensable than God?
Let it go.
You have been freed from slavery,
so don’t act like a slave.
Honor your liberation, and take a day off.
Sabbath is an act of rebellion
against the pharaoh of forced labor that is in our heads.
It’s a strike. Join the strike, for the sake of all those who labor.

We empty ourselves, and wait.
Letting God and nothing else fill our time.
Letting time be a gift. Not an oppression.
Being unimportant, unproductive, irrelevant.
Being an empty canvas for God,
the warm silence of a recording studio for God.
Time to sit and receive, and to wait.
Time to behold the holiness
of the Silence at the heart of all things.

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net October 1, 2020