Sabbath and sunsets

Today at Monday Afternoon Girlies we thought about Sabbath - exploring the sense of ceasing doing things - hard for us with so many activities - sport and music and ballet and zoo and leading KUCA. We thought about how coming to church isn't really Sabbath but more activity.

We thought about whether or not setting aside time is relevant anymore - we liked being able to shop on Sunday's and it is the only day we're often all home as a family to get all those jobs done.

So when you're 14 or 16 or 40-something what does it mean to have Sabbath rest in your life?

Has it got something to do with the holidays?

And then one of us was awake up to a Sabbath moment in the afternoon and we got to share this - from the road and sadly not the rooftop ...

right in the middle of our talking and thinking. A reminder of why we need Sabbath - to cease some things; to embrace our Christian calling with integrity; to rest even our very busy minds and to feast on the beauty of God.

Psalm 33

Why, we pondered, did God collect the deeps in a jar? (Ps 33: 7) even the deeps - arching as they do over the flat earth in prehistory's cosmology - didn't really help us really get into the writer's mind on this one.

According to Bruggemann, Psalm 33 is a psalm of orientation - a psalm where all is right with the world. It was the Psalm we discussed this week at Secret Women's Business. One psalm, 22 vereses and lots of differing thoughts.

Some were uncomfortable with God in heaven looking down on humanity - we half expected zappings (splogging was the techinical term used on the night I believe). It seemed to indicate a distance and evoke the old images of power and domination.

Some were perplexed at trying to live out what it said - could we really be that certain that all was good and fine - I'm paraphrasing here but did we just need to try harder to be like the psalmist.

We tried to grasp hesed - loving kindness or covanental love - a bit like agape in the New Teatament we thought.

And we tried to think about how much we manage to stick with praise - that sense of reflecting on who God is in Godself rather than simply in relation to us.

Our task for the week will be to make the effort with praise - to stick with the God-ness of God this week.