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The Gift of a Sabbatical

or·di·nar·y
ˈôrdnˌerē/
adjective
  1. 1.
    with no special or distinctive features; normal.


It happens.  It is bound to happen.  Maybe it's your job.  Or it's your family.  Or it's just your perpective on life.  Things become ordinary.  Normal.  Commonplace.  Customary.  

The ordinariness itself isn't a bad thing.  It's just the sign that you're settling into a way of life, but the danger in the ordinariness is that you begin to miss life's richness.  Over time, you can lose the child-like faith and wonder of living.  Your job becomes just 'a job.'  The same drive you've made for years becomes so customary you swear you could drive it in your sleep.

Or, over time, your spouse or your kids become just an ordinary part of your day and your life.  Maybe you take them for granted.  Maybe you stop seeing the intricate and unique way that God has fashioned them as a splendor beyond telling.  And maybe with so much ordinariness around you, you start to feel bored.

There are a few cures for this spirit-wilting ordinariness.  Sometimes an event shocks us back to life.  You see a majestic red-tailed hawk on your evening commute, and a bit of the extraordinary is introduced back into your world, a brighter color in a dulled out pallet.  A close call leaves you grasping for breath and counting your blessings.

Sometimes, though, it takes stepping out of your ordinary for a moment.  And this is precisely the gift that you gave me over these last five weeks as a congregation.  You gave me the chance to step outside of a world and routine that - thankfully - is so much a part of my life, it can start to feel ordinary.  

You gave me the chance to see a different world, and thereby to see my own world and life in a new way again.  You gave me the chance to see that while life can feel ordinary, it never is.  Not with an amazing, ever-creative, and ever-loving God intricately and ever-presently attentive to all of creation.  We are tinged and tainted with glory.

I am reminded of one particular part of our sabbatical time that speaks to this point.  It was in the height of heights at the Alpine Visitor Center in the Rocky Mountain National Park.  We had wound our way up through the backside of the Rockies from Granby, Colorado, stopping like all the tourists to snap some shots with the moose and the elk, parking our car along the vista points that saw pine trees stretching for miles and mountain ranges disappearing into the horizon.  We switch-backed all the way above the tree-line, entering a different world of sky and rock and blue and white.

That drive, especially the last part, left me firmly aware that this wasn't ordinary.  Nothing about driving at 12,000 feet with no guardrails on either side is ordinary, at least not to this Midwestern boy who is much more accustomed to corn fields and country roads.  But, the deeper lesson came just shortly after this.

We were hiking up the short trail from the Alpine Visitor Center to the obligatory family photo shoot at 12,100 feet above sea level.  My kids were scurrying up the stone steps, and Anna and I were lingering behind them.  I was taking pictures of the stunning scenery - mountain peaks that I imagined climbing and "grand" things like Long Peak.  I assumed Anna was taking pictures of the same.  

It was only later that evening as we were reviewing pictures that I realized we were actually seeing two different worlds.  While I had my phone's camera trained on mountain ranges and lofty peaks (I'm the globalist!), Anna was actually focused on the ground at her feet.  She was taking pictures of a fantastic event.  For the few short weeks the upper alpine tundra comes alive for summer.  It is short and fleeting, but it is magnificent if you have eyes to see.  Lupines and chickweed flourish in droves.  Tiny blossoms of white and purple and yellow spread out even as the stiff winds whip around the mountain.

She was seeing the extraordinary right at her feet.

That was the gift I was given this sabbatical:  to rediscover the extraordinary right at my feet and all around me.

It was a gift to spend enough time around my kids - both of them.  To see beyond the flurry of actions and schedules and commitments that normally overtake and crowd out my deeper seeing of their personalities.  I learned to see anew my son's incredible love for order and mechanical intricacy.  I learned to see my daughter's intense love for God's holy creation as she paused along creekbeds to chase a leaping toad.  

The same goes for my wife, my work, my community.  It's given me the chance to see that life is not "ordinary" at all.  It is only my perception of things that changes.

And as a I return, my hope and my goal is to have the same mindset that my wife had way up there in Colorado on this stony steps at 12,000 feet.  I want to keep seeing the extraordinary right here at my feet, and here are five ways I plan to do so:

1.  I recommit to seeing each person in this place as created in God's own image.

2.  I recommit to seeing this community as a real and living tapestry of God's redemption - knowing that God loves and cares deeply for all of Putnam County.

3. I recommit to maintaining regular, daily rhythms of "stepping out of the world" to see it afresh and anew from God's perspective - including practicing daily prayer and a weekly Sabbath.

4.  I recommit to spending one day a month in silence (free from technology and screens) as a way to hear and reconnect with my Creator.

5.  I recommit to staying committed to my Christian community as a place to hear my call to love and serve those around me in real and tangible ways.

How about you?  And what did I miss?  What keeps you connected to a sense of life's extraordinariness?  And what allows you to see the beauty and gift of life right at your feet?  

Leave a comment or two at the bottom.  I'd love to know hear from you.

~Pastor Wes



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