Tuesday, July 8, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Sabbath sickness
Even today I still have lingering hiccups. But on Saturday, my Sabbath day, I was sicker than that. I was Sick!
Here’s the thing. Pastor Matt, preaching through the Ten Commandments got to the Fourth Commandment a week ago. REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY TO KEEP IT HOLY.
One thing that means, he said, is to stop what you’re doing all the other six days. Let it go. It will get done later or it won’t get done at all; either way I honor God’s sovereignty, and my own need for control is chastened.
I decided to stop what I’d been doing and instead work outside on Saturday morning, since I hadn’t worked outside for a few weeks. Before the day got really hot, I carried dried brush and leaves to a pile and lit a fire in our firepit. Then when that burned down I carried more dry brush and leaves to the fire. I did this several times, until the brush was gone.
It was getting hot, but I had discovered a big branch resting on our roof broken off a large tree unnoticed, probably a few weeks ago. (Like I said, I wasn’t working outside.) I pulled it down and thought I should cut it into fire-sized pieces, so I got my electric chain saw, plugged it in and sat down ready to cut. That was going pretty well.
Except I was sitting in the sun, and the sun began to heat me up. I was pushing myself to get the cutting done. I guess the heat exhausted me. Inside, satisfied with my Sabbath accomplishment of doing “something different from the other six days,” I quickly realized that minor queasiness was turning into intense vomiting. Diarrhea dehydrated me at the same time, and whatever else I might have done that day was defeated. Sabbath came on with a vengeance. Hour after hour I was sick. I slept and was sick, and then again. All I could do was rest.
On Sunday Margaret went to church. I stayed home and slept all morning, close to the bathroom and the wastebasket. By Monday I felt better, well enough to talk with several folks in spite of the hiccups that still haven’t completely stopped.
The Man wrestled with Jacob all night and finally said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
The Bible is full of embarrassing stories of foolishness usually brought on by the same people God already has overtly blessed. Although perhaps this story of Jacob wrestling with the angel isn’t embarrassing after all – Jacob didn’t think so anyway.
The man asked, “What is your name?” And he answered, “Jacob.”
You shall no longer be spoken of as Jacob, but as Israel, because you have contended with divine and human beings and have prevailed.
And the Israelites chose ever after not to eat the particular muscle damaged in his night-long battle, as a way of honoring God and their ancestor Jacob, renamed Israel in the morning.
Was my own Sabbath sickness a problem? Should I be embarrassed or think of what I did as flippant and unholy? Perhaps any law-abiding Sabbath-keeper might think so. But yesterday as I recovered, I saw a picture of fire in a wind tunnel. During various conversations it took shape as a passage between my inner mystic and outer social selves. Within that passage I saw fire that destroys but also purifies. Within that passage I could pray without feeling the same need to control God I mostly feel every other place.
Within that tunnel filled with swirling heedless fire, I am helpless to choose the life I usually choose – a life of comfort, plans and peace rather than the untamed life of Aslan, or Abednego, or Elijah, or Israel. My prayers in the fierce inferno, the fire that is God, can only be cries, even screams, of surrender.
In justice I shall behold your face, O Lord.
So … that was my Sabbath last week. What will happen next Saturday?
(Genesis 32, Psalm 17, John 10, Matthew 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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