Saturday, February 5, 2022                                       (today’s lectionary)
No other living thing lives like this
Come away by yourselves and rest a while.
Our grandkids in Springfield, Illinois had four snow days this week. They are well rested, if they slept in.
We took a break too, with a fire in the fireplace and some good food, a jigsaw puzzle and a few hours to read and write and pray and play.
In two weeks my favorite retreat program begins its 18th round in Chicago with a new Transforming Community. Each 40+ hour retreat includes an entire afternoon of silence and rest, which the hard-working pastors and teachers who attend appreciate as much or more than the lectures, worship, discussions and meals.
Ruth Haley Barton was once the self-ordained Minister of Rest when her Willow Creek ministry colleagues made their own retreats. The first of nine weekends for her TC18 will be all about sabbath, getting away, and rest. As Dallas Willard says, “If you don’t come apart for awhile, you will come apart after awhile.”
Even more disconcerting and no less true, Wayne Muller says “If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives (and remember, no other living thing lives like this), illness becomes our Sabbath – our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create Sabbath for us.”
I wonder if Solomon avoided that over-busyness that “no other living thing” lives with. In his appointment with God at Gibeon, in the dream which followed his thousand burnt offerings, he did say (was this a complaint?):
Who is able to govern this vast people of yours?
God’s answer was to appreciate Solomon’s humility and awareness of his own inadequacy and inability, “not knowing at all how to act in the midst of the people.”
I serve you.
Solomon meant what he said, and God responded.
You have not asked for a long life for yourself. You have not asked for riches. You have not asked me to kill your enemies. And so I will give you a heart so wise and understanding that there has never been anyone like you up to now, and after you there will come no one to equal you.
What I notice is that Solomon didn’t even try to do this on his own. “I serve you,” he said to Yahweh. And like Solomon, when we too finally stop trying to do life on our own, we realize as Muller says inspiringly, “Our life is not a problem to be solved, but a gift to be opened.”
It is then we can sit on a blanket with our family, deep in the center of Israel, and wait for the boat to arrive.
When Jesus disembarked and saw (us), his heart was moved with pity, for (we) were like sheep without a shepherd (yes, that’s the idea. We serve you, God). And he began to teach us many things.
(Painting: “The Dream of Solomon,” 1694-95 by Luca Giordano, at the Prado in Madrid)
(1 Kings 3, Psalm 119, John 10, Mark 6)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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