Quaker Life

Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath for the LORD your God. You shall do no work that day, neither you nor your son nor your daughter nor your slaves, men or women, nor your animals nor the foreigner living with you. For in six days the LORD made the heavens, earth and sea and all that these contain, but on the seventh day he rested; that is why the LORD has blessed the Sabbath day and made it sacred. [Ex. 20:8–11]

All of our authors in this Sabbath-themed issue of Quaker Life agree that setting aside time for rest, reflection, and renewal is difficult—not only setting aside an entire day, as the words of Moses command, but even a portion of an hour. Yet they also agree that such time, whether on Sunday, an alternate weekday, or a small portion of time throughout the day, isn’t simply a legalistic observance but a practice with deep benefit for our souls.

Several of our authors consider the ways that they’ve discovered to find Sabbath time. Katherine Murray writes about her twin discoveries that she actually has more time than she thinks, and that it is God—and not her checkbook—which is her Savior. Paul Graseck discovers that each day can be filled with quiet moments of solitude and inactivity in which we can discover the connectedness of the world, and awe with a lower-case A. Tom Palmer writes that if we see Sabbath as an attitude, and not simply a day—which should come naturally to Friends for whom all of life can be sacramental—we will be able to experience Sabbath throughout our days.

Kelly Kellum suggests some methods that we can find Sabbath time outside the parameters of Sundays, including through the practice of self-examination, and by remembering that our true identity comes from who we are as beloved children of God, not from what we do or accomplish.

Hannah Lutz writes about her discovery that the work of Love is not exhausting once we discover that we don’t create or manufacture the Love we express. The Love we act upon arises in God’s graceful Love for us. Because we are not an engine creating Love, we can have the experience of which Christ assures us in Matthew 11:28: an easy yoke, and a light burden.

Julie Rudd writes about learning to see obstacles as, sometimes, God’s gathering in, God’s protection. In a similar vein, Katie Terrell considers how the observance of Sabbath allows us to practice the art of being interrupted, to practice relinquishing control and submitting to God’s initiative—for our own good, and for the greater good.

Phil Baisley brings together the two ideas of Sabbath as interruption and Sabbath as set-aside time when he writes about the surprising ways that God can lead a worship service away from what a pastor has planned for it, and draw it into a deeper, unanticipated manifestation of the Spirit in motion.

Emily Provance writes about the physiological and psychological necessity, in times of social and physical turmoil, of stepping away from our focus on problems and into times of imagination, creativity, unhindered expressions of joy. Stepping away from our focus on the world’s suffering at some times is necessary in order for us to develop the mind’s capacity to face those problems head on at other times.

Also in this issue, Lynn Peery Mills reviews the book, Annice Carter’s Life of Quaker Service. The book holds special interest for Mills, who met Carter on several occasions. Mills found the book especially interesting in describing the sweep of Carter’s life and some of the beliefs that anchored it.

The call came in after midnight on February 21. It was Children’s Services, asking if I was willing to come to the hospital and take custody of two minor children.

I was listed in the hospital database as the emergency contact for their mother. Early on in my time as director of an emergency drop-in shelter for women and children, I learned that many people become homeless because of a lack of resources, including a lack of family or social network. Without a support system, they not only have nowhere to turn for shelter, they also have no one who will go to appointments with them, no one in the waiting room when they receive hard news, no one to list as an emergency contact. So I’ve made sure that my guests at the shelter know they can always list me, that I’ll always sit in the waiting room with them, that I’ll always be there to drive them home when they are released, no matter what time of day or night. Little did I know that this could also mean becoming legal guardian of their children.

I immediately made the short drive to the emergency room. There were police officers and CPS workers to brief me, legal documents to sign, and children to get home to bed so that they could go to school the next morning as if their whole worlds hadn’t just been turned upside down. And mine, too.

God frequently interrupts our lives to grow us, to change us, to remind us who is in control. Interruptions come in the form of midnight phone calls, a doctor’s diagnosis, chance encounters, life-changing conversations, even a word directly from God. These interruptions cause us to change course. They turn our lives upside down.

I had suddenly gone from having control of my time, my refrigerator, and my laundry basket, to packing school lunches for picky eaters, setting boundaries on screen time, and wondering why it was so hard to pick a towel up off the floor and put it in the hamper.

As if one interruption wasn’t enough, just as we all started to adjust to life together, one of the children went to live with a grandparent while I retained custody of the other. Now not only had these children been separated from their mother, but they’d also been separated from each other. My extremely independent, introverted nature and need for personal space had been interrupted even further by a child who now clung to me like a life raft.

Would I still have said yes to this assignment had God laid the plans out before me, shown me the road map instead of hitting me with a detour? Probably. Then again, I’d been pretty content to be able to pack up and go whenever I wanted without having to be home in time to meet the school bus. I’d definitely enjoyed being able to afford to go out to dinner that didn’t involve nuggets and fries. I hadn’t appreciated enough that there were always socks in my drawer and toilet paper on the roll.

But there is so much I would have missed out on had God not interrupted my life. The first time she asked me to braid her hair. Her first time jumping off the diving board. When she asked me to start writing her napkin notes and putting them in her lunch box. A lost tooth, a tonsillectomy, her first x-ray, turning eleven. Bedtime routines and after-school snacks and comforting her after visits with her mom and letting her be mad at me for not allowing her to drink frappes every day. Endless tears, laughs, hugs, “I-love-yous” and “I’m-sorrys.” The Sunday she told me that she found God while listening to me preach about misplacing Him, or the Thursday that she told me God had planned this, for her to live with me in this season.

I couldn’t begin to describe all the ways that I have been blessed—and challenged—by this Divine interruption. I certainly never would have imagined how attached we would both be, ten months later, on December 12, when the courts decided that she could return to her mother. This feels like just as big of an interruption as that phone call on February 21. But just as that interruption turned out to be an invitation, an invitation to trust God more, to experience Him in new and deeper ways, to learn to love the way He loves without condition, to set aside my independence and make room for others, this interruption, too, can be an invitation to all that He has called me to be.

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The Bible is full of divine interruptions. Noah’s life was interrupted by a flood. Abraham and Sarah’s lives were interrupted by the birth of a child after nearly a century of barrenness. Moses’ life was interrupted by a burning bush. Joseph’s life was interrupted by dreams. Rahab’s life was interrupted by two spies knocking on her door. Ruth and Naomi’s lives were interrupted by the deaths of their husbands. David’s life was interrupted by a giant. Daniel’s life was interrupted by a lion. Mary and Joseph’s lives were interrupted by the Holy Spirit and angels and an immaculate conception. That’s right: Jesus was an interruption.

Not only was Jesus an interruption, but Jesus was constantly interrupting others. He interrupted people’s lives with stories like that of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. He interrupted their plans by forgiving sinful women and dining with tax collectors and telling His disciples to go fishing in the morning after they’d been out all night, followed by instructing them to fish for people, not catfish and tilapia. He interrupted them by healing on the Sabbath and telling them that He’d disguised Himself as “the least of these” to see if they—we—would feed Him, clothe Him, shelter Him, and visit Him in His time of need. The language of God, the language of the Bible, the language of Jesus, is interruption.

Interruptions threaten our plans and that’s precisely why God uses them so frequently. In fact, if not daily, He certainly uses them weekly.

Genesis chapter one tells the story of Creation. In the beginning, God had an agenda, a daily planner. It looked like this:

Day one: light

Day two: sky

Day three: land

Day four: sun, moon

Day five: creatures of the sea, birds of the air

Day six: animals, humans

Each day God interrupted the formless void with His works, His creation. Then, on day seven, He interrupted His work with rest.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. [Genesis 2:2-3]

Day seven: interruption.

We’ve established that God’s interruptions are God’s invitation to a better way, His way, but we still don’t typically like interruptions, desire them or appreciate them when confronted by them. Interruptions irritate our will. They push against our desire for control. They are a threat to our plans and our agenda. Which is precisely why so many people refuse to honor the Sabbath. It is an interruption, an interruption to our desire to accomplish things, an interruption to our identity as workers, an interruption to our routine, our flow. It requires us to relinquish control, and rest.

God rested when the work was done. God rested when He got tired. He set the example that we are to follow. But, God, what if my work is never done, and what if I’m always tired?

Henri Nouwen wrote, “My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered the interruptions were my work.”

God wants us to interrupt our work with worship, because that is our real work.

Sabbath reminds us who created us, and why we were created. Sabbath shakes us out of complacency and allows us to hear the voice of God. Sabbath is our invitation to the holy, to the sacred, to the set-apart, to the heart of God. Sabbath is our weekly opportunity to practice being interrupted by God for the higher good. When we practice the Sabbath we are practicing for the Divine interruptions that will permeate our lives, shape our character, and lead us in the way everlasting.

Lord, interrupt me again and again. Amen.