That Sabbath May Return
V
Six days of work are spent
To make a Sunday quiet
That Sabbath may return.
It comes in unconcern;
We cannot earn or buy it.
Suppose rest is not sent
Or comes and goes unknown,
The light, unseen, unshown.
Suppose the day begins
In wrath at circumstance,
Or anger at one's friends
In vain self-innocence
False to the very light,
Breaking the sun in half,
Or anger at oneself
Whose controverting will
Would have the sun stand still.
The world is lost in loss
Of patience; the old curse
Returns, and is made worse
As newly justified.
In hopeless fret and fuss,
In rage at worldly plight
Creation is defied,
All order is unpropped,
All light and singing stopped.
(from This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems, by Wendell Berry)
“That Sabbath may return.”
I think it a sad aspect of our culture, particularly in our Christian culture, that the understanding and practice of Sabbath has been lost. I love that Wendell Berry through his poetry is trying to help us reclaim it.
For with this one phrase he’s gently taking us by the hand and offering us a different way to view six days of the week. He’s painting a picture of those days of work spent to make a Sunday quiet. In other words, to take all our days of work, spent in busyness and fullness and “getting things done,” with all their noise of clamor and effort, spending all of that — getting it all out of our system — so that this one day may be spent in quiet.
For Yahweh God, the Holy One of Israel, has said:
“You will be delivered by returning and resting;
your strength will lie in quiet...
But you are not willing.”
Isaiah 30:15
Huh.
And that’s just it, isn’t it? We are not willing. We are unwilling to let all the doing go, are unwilling to return and rest, unwilling to stop producing, stop achieving, stop running this way and that, to just…stop. Unwilling to consider that it’s actually in returning and resting and quiet that we will find strength.
Friend, may God grant us the wisdom and ability to live differently.
To see time the way he sees time.
That one day in seven of rest — and I realize that even understanding what the wide spectrum of rest is is another extended conversation — but, may he help us see that one day in seven in rest is good for us.
After all, God himself set the example:
So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed. On the seventh day God had completed his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it he rested from all his work of creation.
Genesis 2:1-3
