the time of life

After this latest hiatus I am into the comments again.

Kate is now at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, OH and greatly enjoying being in college. Molly is a sophomore at Firestone High School and starting for the varsity girls soccer team.

I am spending time these days reading "The Sabbath" by Abraham Heschel, "Working the Angles" by Eugene Peterson, and "Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense" by N. T. Wright.

Here is some good reading from Heschel's book:

The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals; and our Holy of Holies is a shrine that neither the Romans or the Nazis were able to burn; a shrine that even apostasy cannot easily obliterate: the Day of Atonement.

The Bible is more concerned with time than with space. It sees the world in the dimension of time. It pays more attention to generations, to events, than to countries, to things; it is more concerned with history than with geography. To understand the teaching of the Bible, one must accept the premise that time has a meaning for life which is at least equal to that of space; that time has a significance and sovereignty of its own.

He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world already has been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world; on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.