I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
Helen Keller
My day was filled with small tasks – laundry, meals, cleaning out the refrigerator, more laundry, cleaning the bathroom, ironing the sheets (!), etc. But they are important tasks nonetheless because they allow me to demonstrate my love to my husband in giving him a clean and orderly home. They also demonstrate my commitment to be a good steward of the materials blessings that God has given to us.
Last Sunday the pastor spoke on the Sabbath rest. He talked about how God reflected on His creation work and how we too should use the Sabbath to reflect on the good work we have done during the previous week. I love to climb into bed Saturday evening and know my house is cleaned up, my laundry is caught up, our business is organized and ready for Monday, and I have made preparations for the next day. There is something about waking up on Sunday and knowing I get to REST and not feel guilty about it that is so wonderful! I am so glad God in His great wisdom and compassion gave us a day to rest and to reflect on the good works He has allowed us to accomplish.
1 comment:
Hopefully you'll find this even though it's for an older post! I've been out of the blog loop for a while but skimming through your recent entries. I was excited to see that you are also a proponent and beneficiary of taking Sabbaths! One of the few things I can honestly say has "changed my life."
Our former pastor had a huge passion for this and emphasized it for a year. Many sermons, lots of personal stories, and resource references (I read Marva Dawn's Keeping the Sabbath Wholly which is awesome!). Now I am a very... task-oriented, organized, 'responsible', duty-motivated person. It was *very* hard for me to stop all that for a whole day! But once I started... after just a short while if outside circumstances prevented one week's practice I truly mourned it!
It has now been years, and I am so much more relaxed about life than I used to be! To those who've never experienced it I try to compare it to other spiritual disciplines like attending church or a Bible study, or having a quiet time - once it's a habit you can't imagine life without it!
My main rule is to try to eliminate the word "should" from my thoughts that day. Pastor Dan emphasized that what may be work for one person could be a fun, restful activity for another (e.g. cooking or gardening). I usually "nap and scrap" and am almost to the point of taking this time for granted, so your post was a good reminder to be humbly appreciative!
*muah*
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