It’s hard to really experience sabbatical when I still have to preach, make a bulletin, plan for summer worship and even fall worship (!) because I won’t be able to do that over the summer. There are also grant proposals upon which the future depends…

I was hoping I would really be working a lot less these first two weeks of June. Technically, my sabbatical from Grace Commons began as of June 1st. But my sabbatical from St. James does not begin until June 17th. From then on, I will be off until September 1st.

I am working full-on for these two weeks, and it is teaching me how devoted I will need to be to myself and to the Sabbath process in order to get the renewal I will need.

Let this be a lesson to me! Let me create a sanctuary in time for myself through this sabbatical. That’s a wonderful concept I got from Abraham Joshua Heschel from his beautiful book, The Sabbath.

From the inside flap of the book:

Judaism, [Heschel] argues, is the religion of time: it finds meaning not in space and the material things that fill it but in time and the eternity that imbues it, so that “the Sabbaths are our great cathedrals.”

As a Christian, I have a lot to learn from this wonderful Jewish teacher. I love this little book. I pray I can be inspired by it on my sabbatical.

May my Sabbatical be a Great Cathedral. AMEN.