Sunday. This particular one found me walking along a road in New Hampshire, freshly covered in powder and glimmering in the mid-morning sun. Every step stole my breath as the temperatures lingered in the mid-20s. Three of us were en route to find some solid blue ice, decent enough to hold the bite of our ice tools. As we walked, the only sound that broke the muffled silence was the swishing of our pants. I found myself pondering a recent conversation with a friend about what it meant to observe the Sabbath. He asked me what I thought it meant to rest, to lay down my work and allow for God's provision to get me through the day. My response was that yes, I fully believed in resting and yes, God would provide even without me working for it. But he challenged it, urging me to tell him what I did on Sundays. Did I indeed rest from my work and spend time delighting in God? And to that, I had no answer. At least, none that I could voice without feeling ashamed. I thought to my Sunday routines, marked with a lack of "work" with my job - but filled with cleaning the house, training runs, fixing equipment and preparations of meals for the coming week, to name a few. No, my actions did not reflect a heart that truly believed my God would provide for me. For those things were not done out of delight or out of enjoyment in the Lord, but out of disbelief. Whether conscious or not, they were a glaring statement that I do not take time to observe the day of rest that God demands out of love. I realized I needed to change my habits, starting with being conscious of how I chose to spend my Sundays. Were the activities that filled my Sunday a response of delight or an act of work? Stopping for a moment to catch our breath after cresting a hill, I looked out across the dark, swift-moving waters of the river to my left, its banks lined by the white-lined conifers. All around, the sun shone on the bright snow, causing a laugh of delight to spring up from inside me. And I asked myself the question, Are you observing the Sabbath today? To which my heart seemed almost immediately to respond, Yes, indeed! And how could it not? I was delighting in my Father's very handiwork! A landscape designed with everything from the broad strokes of the snow-capped White Mountains to the very meticulous strokes of each and every snowflake. I was standing in the very center of God's Cathedral. And it was there that I chose to worship that Sunday morning, delighting in the gifts and skills that God graced me with and the glory of his creation. I worked my muscles on those ice climbs, but my heart was filled with rest.
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