My heart is full as we emerge from the whirl of our daughter's wedding. I mean, at first, it absolutely flattened us. We felt like we had been run over by a train, and indeed, we had. A wedding train! David and I were so exhausted, we mostly slept on Monday and then did some necessary self-care on Tuesday just to return to some sense of baseline. But, my oh my, what a beautiful weekend of goodness and beauty and love! It was hard to take it all in! It was one of those days that gives us a glimpse of heaven. Where we celebrate and feast, laugh and dance and remember what is most important in life -- LOVE. Connection. Relationship. Commitment. Family.

As I watched through tears the love that my daughter and her new husband share as they looked into each others eyes and committed their love for a lifetime. As I took in the deep affection that my children have for one another as they offered banter and support with plenty of laughter that eventually gave way to tears. As I took in the heart-rending dance as my daughter Anna sang the song she had picked to dance with her dad at the young age of 9. As I was blessed by all our family who traveled near and far just to be together. And as I witnessed this community that surrounded these two. I realized again that these moments of celebration, goodness, and delight are the most profound reality that we know. They are moments of sabbath - of shalom - of heaven here on earth that remind us who we are.

For God created us to live in these rhythms of Sabbath, rhythms of rest, play and delight to orient our lives around God's goodness in the world.

Some may think the Sabbath archaic as a ritual reserved only for observant Jews, no longer relevant in our 24/7, always-on, technological culture, but the Sabbath has never been more relevant. For we were created to live in harmony, connection and delight. And for the devout Jew, the Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; it is not just an interlude of rest and recreation to enable us to work all the harder during the week. Rather, the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not just a break in the pattern of daily life but the whole meaning of it.

For this taste of heaven is the organizing force, that which orients all of our lives.
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“The Sabbath, thus, is more than an armistice, more than an interlude; it is a profound conscious harmony of man and the world, a sympathy for all things and a participation in the spirit that unites what is below and what is above. All that is divine in the world is brought into union with God. This is Sabbath, and the true happiness of the universe." 
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath

Every year in August, it is my tradition to take a Sabbath. To rest and to take some time away from our community. And admittedly, this is hard for me. Of course, I enjoy the vacation, but it also is a discipline for me to let go and to trust, to remember that I am human and in need of rest, and to cease from my work to allow room for the Spirit's work. And so as I take a few weeks of Sabbath, I invite you to practice Sabbath as well! To enter into goodness, play, delight, and community. To let go of all the burdens and concerns, injustices and sorrows of the world for some moments of gratitude and delight and pure joy. Because these are the moments that we are living for. As the words of Saint John compel us, may we orient our lives around this love that is at the very center of the cosmos.

“Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath … one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.” 
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath

But if you are like me, you may struggle to cease from vigilance, performance and control. You may find it difficult to fully enter into rest, delight and play. You may have stories of harm that have dictated to you that you must never let your guard down, that you must stay vigilant, responsible, and in control, preventing you from fully celebrating goodness because you fear when the other shoe will drop. And while I hate to break it to you, the shoe will drop. Even on my daughter's beautiful wedding day, I am aware that there will be many more days of sorrow, difficulty and pain ahead. This is the way of life as we wait for the full redemption of all things.

And yet, on feast days, on wedding days, on days of magnificent goodness when we get a taste of heaven, these are not days for anxiety or grief or despair.

​These days are reserved only for deep gratitude, for profound joy, and for heart-singing delight!

And so my prayer is that you would experience the grace to practice for eternity when everything will be put to right -- and that you will taste moments of sheer goodness, delight and joy in the days ahead!

​by Jessica Ketola

We've been talking about going deeper in our understanding of the heights and depths, breadth and width of the love of God - and how our practices of worship and prayer put us in the way of grace to experience God in the everyday rhythms of our lives. This is where transformation happens. As we learn to integrate the presence of God and the reality of God's good kingdom that is reconciling everything and everyone into our sometimes harried and gritty lives. As we cease to compartmentalize our spirituality into a "God box" or a "Sunday box" and learn to see the Spirit at work, present to us, all the time. This is why the saints of old have cultivated "praying without ceasing" or what Brother Lawrence called the practice of the presence of God.

Yes, it is a practice.

​This is not a novel concept but embedded in our story from the very beginning. Brother Lawrence of the 17th century knew this. So did Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and many before her, including the early desert fathers and mothers and well...even St. Paul.

We are most deeply formed not by what we think or believe, or by what we think we believe, but by what we love and what we worship. For first and foremost, we are desiring, worshipping creatures -- in short, we are created to worship. And so whatever our hearts are aimed at points us toward a vision of the good life. And it is our practices, our liturgies, and our embodied rhythms that capture our passions, our desires, and our affections. Whether that is in the temple of the mall or the temple of HGTV or the temple of the sport's stadium or the temple of Wall Street.

And so what are our practices of prayer and worship and presence in our lives?

Deuteronomy 6 wisely calls us to these rhythms as we wake and as we lie down, as we eat and as we talk with our children and as we go about our day. Knowing that we need these touch points of worship embedded in our daily lives to continue to point our hearts towards shalom.

Do we start our day in the loving gaze of God as we drink our coffee in the morning? Do we pray while we work or do the dishes or ride the bus? Do we pause at fixed hours of the days to acknowledge the one who sustains our very breath? Do we have practices of gratitude and worship, reflection and meditation? Do we sit in the richness of the word and let it ground us in the truth?

There is a depth of relationship, a depth of peace, contentment and joy rooted in the love of God that is indeed available to us. As Brother Lawrence has said, It is God who paints Himself in the depths of our soul. We must merely open our hearts to receive Him and His loving presence. And so I encourage you not to "settle" and to continue then to be dissatisfied with the shallowness of your experience of God.

There is more.

The Spirit is here, with us. And because of the Spirit, there is more than enough!

by Jessica Ketola