starting over

Last Sunday I preached on Sabbath rest. My colleague Pastor Mark did a great job of summing it up for the Eucharist liturgy by saying, "It's the law to rest." I'm currently reading Kathleen Norris' latest book "Acedia and Me" and I thought she had a great tie-in to the idea of Sabbath. How every week we are called to sabbath, a starting over. She writes, "To be always a beginner, in our competative culture, is to be a loser. It is to remain continually vulnerable...Because it impedes my illusory forward movement, having to begin again can feel like failure. It reminds me that work I thought finished must be redone, and I resent being reminded of the transitory nature of all things...as a person of faith I am always beginning again with prayer. I can never learn these things, once and for all, and master them. I can only perform them, set them aside, and then start over."

Here's to starting over, every Sabbath! To never mastering faith, but finding time to rest in God and start again and again and again.