Beach sabbath

I've never really been the type to take Spring Break to sit and rest. Over the past six years, the only time I haven't gone on some sort of mission trip was the year I had to visit seminaries and figure out my future. So the fact that I am presently sitting by a sunny window in a beach condo and looking forward to another day by the water and evening in a hot tub feels kind of foreign to me. In a good way. In a Sabbath kind of way.

I'm not trying to claim that I have the most stressful life ever, especially this semester. But I've been in higher education for seven years now and, as much as I love it, burnout is setting in. There's something to be said for just getting away. It lets me reconnect. I can sit on the beach reading patristic theology and feel like I'm trying to understand God better by choice, instead of just being pressured to finish.

Yesterday evening Kim and Lauren and I drove around the island, from the condo to dinner, and to the house with the hot tub, and back. It was dark and completely peaceful, these windy roads under canopies of Spanish moss. Kim found some old CDs with redone traditional hymns and we all sang along as we drove. There was something about the night, the quiet, the being with good friends that made the words seem especially true. That's what Sabbath does, I think. It gives you time to remember what is especially true.