Ahh. The Sabbath. How much I have enjoyed The Sabbath Experiment / Experience. It really has changed my life and, dare I say, greatly improved my marriage. Bill and I were talking about that yesterday afternoon and he agreed. Since starting The Sabbath Experiment the last week in September, we've grown closer and are generally happier in our marriage. That was a perk I hadn't planned on from the beginning, but in hindsight, see that it makes sense.
Slowing down. Enjoying life. Enjoying family. Even if it is just for one day a week, that's certainly better than no days a week. After all, I was just too busy. Or so I thought.
Do you fall into that trap? Do you feel as if you slow down you might miss something? Guess what? If you don't slow down, you will miss things ... many things.
I shared this story with my Sunday School class yesterday morning:
A migrant South African tribe went for long marches on a regular basis. Day after day they would trudge along until suddenly, they would stop and set up camp. When asked why they stopped, the answer was simple -- so their souls could catch up with them.
Ask yourself -- when was the last time you let your soul catch up? Have you been trudging along at such a harried pace that your soul has been left somewhere in a cloud of dust? Be honest. God calls us to rest one day a week. It's not a legalistic calling, but one of concern, care and love for you, a vital part of His creation.
The Sabbath is so important to God, that He even calls upon us to allow our animals to rest on the Sabbath:
In Exodus 23, verse 12, He says: “Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed."
If a Sabbath rest is important enough for your ox and donkey, don't you think it's important for you?
It's funny. I spent several hours out with a friend on Saturday. My plan was to come home and work. However, I got home and simply didn't feel like it. So I told Bill I was going to have to work on Sunday evening. And then I sat down to prepare my Sunday School lesson. Talk about conviction!! There would be no work for me on Sunday. Or so I thought.
My intentions were good. My plan was to go to Sunday School and church, out to lunch with the kids and grandkids, and then come home for an afternoon and evening of rest. We were going to watch a movie, play some Bananagrams and possibly nap. It was going to be a lovely day. But then I opened my silverware drawer. The smell of peppermint oil wafted up from the open drawer. As I reached for a teaspoon to stir my coffee, I stopped and stared. There, positioned neatly between two of my favorite spoons, was a shiny new piece of mouse poop. Like a balloon encounting a sharp object, my plans for the day quickly deflated. So much for the peppermint oil -- the mice in my house are not at all repelled by it.
Although we did nap for awhile after lunch, we eventually had to get up and face the daunting task of emptying the drawers, washing everything, wiping down the drawers with vinegar and then with the Norwex cloth. Of course, that wasn't all we had to do. Since this was the third time mice left evidence in our drawers of their presence this summer, and since the peppermint oil apparently was ineffective, we had to work, and I mean work, on solving the problem. That meant closing up the entry points.
Could someone explain to me why kitchen cabinets are not closed up all the way in the back? Apparently, I'm not the only one with this problem. When I started typing in the problem on Google, all I had to write was "Mice in ..." and Google completed the sentence with "... silverware drawer." Really? There were 104,000 responses. I was not alone.
Reaching into the back of cabinets through narrow drawer openings was not an easy task for a husband with bursitis (we think) in his shoulder. The pain, evidenced by his facial expressions and not by his complaining, was intense. And this was supposed to be a day of rest!!
The moral of the story -- despite our best intentions, sometimes life has a way of undoing them. In this case, our intentions were undone by a mouse.
Hoping your day was restful,
Hana
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