Dear Church Family and Friends,

Another Christmas has passed and the New Year is here. After all the hustle and busy glitz of the holidays, the gray and gloomy days of January may seem empty and depressing. Rather than complaining about winter, I invite you to embrace the quietness of January as a time for Sabbath.

Pastor Wayne Muller has written “In the relentless busyness of modern life, we have lost the rhythm between work and rest. ….In our drive for success we are seduced by the promises of more: more money, more recognition, more satisfaction, more love, more information, more influence, more possessions, more security. Even when our intentions are noble and our efforts sincere – the corrosive pressure of frantic over-activity can nonetheless cause suffering in ourselves and others.”

How have we allowed this to happen? We have forgotten the Sabbath. I’m not talking about the time we take for worship on Sunday morning. Sabbath is a much bigger concept and even more important. Sabbath is both a spiritual practice and a metaphor for taking our hands off the plow and letting God and the earth speak to us. Sabbath is taking time for nourishing rest; stopping to listen to the still, small voice of God; pausing long enough to remember who we are as God’s beloved children.

As we live into the winter season, let us find times of Sabbath. Just as the earth needs the fallow time of winter before the burst of energy that comes with spring, we need times of rest in which we breathe deeply into the rhythms of life and find wholeness and healing. May your winter Sabbath bring you peace and quiet joy.

Shalom,

Pastor Pat

*Muller, Wayne. Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives. Bantam Books, 1999

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