COVID as Sabbath

 Wendell Berry (born 1934)

Sabbath

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

    The problem with rules is that we quickly mistake the rule for what it is intended to secure. Martin Luther made a mistake when he said "If you make confession voluntary people will flock to it." Ya, right. Many Lutherans are not even aware that private confession is included in Luther's Small Catechism. Compulsory confession also has its drawbacks.  You may be able to force people to confess but you can't force them to mean it.

     So it is with sabbath. It's intention is pure gift; time to relax, focus, give thanks, renew. No other culture had thought of such a thing when the Hebrews began to take a weekly sabbath rest. Many of us remember rules about what could and couldn't be done on Sundays. 

     The babys been thrown out with the bathwater as reaction to legalistic rules about Sunday have been replaced with "anything goes." This has not been in our best interest.  Perhaps we should frame COVID as sabbath: relax, focus, give thanks, renew.

     This morning I spent a bit of time picking rocks out of a field. Of all the things I didn't like about work on the farm as a youngster picking rocks was the top of the list. Every winter frost would move more rocks, left by the retreating glacier, high enough to turned up by tillage. On cold, windy, spring days, with dirt blowing in our faces we'd lug rocks to a wagon. Those too big to lift would be rolled on to a stone boat. But, rocks are hard on machinery so now I continue the practice of picking. 

Takk for alt,

Al

                                               Sunset on my little pond.