sleep. sabbath. surrender.

SLEEP: I have a coffee mug from Small World Coffee in Princeton, NJ that reads, "Sleep Is for the Weak!" It was purchased back in the days of all-nighters and grad school paper writing marathons. This was in the time when I believed staying up until 3am to find to perfect way to turn a phrase or to expound upon some theological concept revealed my passion for my work and demonstrated my commitment to good theology. Or maybe I wasn't good at time management - putting off that paper until the final hours before the deadline. Regardless, in a way, I embraced that mantra: "Sleep is for the weak." And I didn't get much of it.

I have since realized that the words on my mug are just plain wrong, nothing but crap (not unlike some of those grad school papers written at 4am). We need sleep. I need sleep. (Let me tell you, being an on-call chaplain at a major hospital proves how essential sleep is). And you know what, I need at least seven hours a night to be truly at my best, to be kind to others, and to turn my attention from myself and my worries to see the needs in the world around me. At least seven hours of sleep. And I do even better with eight or nine. I have this awareness, I know this about myself, and yet I am continually amazed at what a good night's sleep can do for my whole outlook on life. Not to mention what it does for my body.

And there is nothing quite like a restful sleep followed by a cup of hot coffee. Now, I may no longer subscribe to the slogan on the mug, but I still am a devotee of the brew there within.


SABBATH: The Christian and Jewish traditions holds to a weekly Sabbath-keeping pattern of six days of labor followed by a day of rest. The first story of Creation holds that God creates the world in six days and then rests upon the seventh. God then blesses this day and declares it holy. And then God shares this day, this day of rest, with humanity. The Sabbath, a day of rest - a radical concept in this age of rushing about - is thus considered a gift from God by those who profess the Christian and Jewish faiths.

The Sabbath is more than a day off. For many of us clergy folk doing this ministry gig, we use our day off to run errands, to do all those personal chores and tasks that we cannot do when we are busy tending to the concerns of our congregations or doing the ministry of the churches we serve. This is not Sabbath. This is not rest.

And unfortunately, even for those of us who understand the necessity of Sabbath-keeping, of truly resting, we somehow get it wrong. We rush, rush, rush about until we collapse. And only then do we rest. And only because we can't continue in our busy-ness. We don't really keep Sabbath. And we certainly don't incorporate this gift of rest into the pattern of our lives.

David is a new church planter in Arizona, serving Coolwater Christian Church, outside of Phoenix. He is also my coach in this whole new church adventure. He reframed this whole idea of Sabbath-keeping in fresh new way:

In Genesis, we know that God creates humans. And then God rests. So on their first day on earth. humans rested. Before they worked, they rested. You see, we get it wrong. We think we need to rest from our work. But in reality, we work from our rest.


SURRENDER: Now, I know that in traditional Christian thought the word "surrender" usually means one of two things: (1) dying to self, or the emptying of self, to allow the personality or spirit of Christ to live in through the believer; or (2) surrendering to the will of God, accepting God's destiny as one's own.

As a heretic, I am not one to go for traditional understandings. And to be honest, both of these ways of talking about the concept of "surrender" within the Christian tradition make me a little uncomfortable. I guess they just simplify the idea too much for my liking. And I like things a little complex. And I want to feel as if I still have some agency in my own life, even though, on most days, I profess this crazy little thing called faith. And even though, on most days, I embrace the term "Christian" to describe my faith.

Still, I am drawn to the word "surrender", this idea of giving up trying to control outcomes, of letting life unfold as it will. I don't see "surrendering" as saying some magic formula of prayers, giving a situation over to "God", and then waiting for everything to work out just right. For me, it's more about doing all that I can, and then making peace with the outcome, trusting that what I and others have done is enough.


The Event is tonight. I have been working my tail off for months. And maybe it's because I have slept (really well for the first time in weeks!). And maybe it is because I took a day for Sabbath yesterday. Maybe, because of these, I am able to surrender, to relinquish "control", and to be at peace.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll catch a glimpse of the Divine in the midst, and the results will once again exceed the sum of my labors. Wouldn't that be nice?