Monday, October 30, 2006
I sat in a coffee shop this past Friday morning, waiting for an appointment. I had a few minutes to kill, so I pulled out a book I'm reading for school. I literally could not get through a sentence because of the chaos going on in my head. I don't know how many times I directed my eyes back to the same sentence. Every time I tried, a different distraction, a different item on my task list, a different situation that I need to deal with jumped to my attention. For a couple minutes there, I couldn't even focus on my distractions because I would get distracted by other distractions.
I found myself just saying the words to myself, "I need a Sabbath."
I don't need to bore myself or you, dear reader, with the particulars of what's going on. I only know a handful of people who wouldn't describe themselves as busy, so I won't go complaining. But I do need Sabbath.
The paradox, of course, is that in order to really engage Sabbath, I have to take all these overdue tasks and put them off even further. I know one thing I don't want, and that's to wreck the concept and value of it by putting Sabbath on my task list.
There's a lot of really good stuff going on - stuff I eagerly anticipate. But, oh yes, it's got me running.
So to those few of you who check in on me here for updates, I ask for a little grace for not having posted much of late. I won't say that I'll try harder. I'll just say that Sabbath needs to take priority.
