Glorious fall days. In the late fall when the maples and birches have given up their leaves, but the stubborn oaks still keep theirs, you can see farther into the woods. Things open up as the underbrush becomes dormant.

This natural development is also a metaphor for one aspect of the spiritual life. Life in the spirit is, at least in part, a way of seeing - a kind of opening, an availability to whatever appears. The spiritual disciplines, which are many and varied, have as their primary effect the clearing away of the underbrush. These practices don’t actually make God or the Christ appear. They help make us available, open to the God whose presence is always being made known – for those with eyes to see.

Sabbath keeping is one of the ancient disciplines – a divinely given, commanded pattern of ceasing our usual activity and remembering our deepest identity in God. It is a discipline that clears away some of the underbrush of our illusions of independence and self-sufficiency so that we can see our own lives and the life of the world around us as it truly is – pure gift, pure grace and all of it of God.

Peace,

Pastor Lee Goodwin +