My heart went in my stomach. Though I’d played college basketball I had spent all my time the previous year in the library studying theology—I was in no shape to do this. Neither were my two friends.

We drove from West Texas to the Colorado Springs area the night before we were to climb. I informed my friends that I needed to go to Wal-Mart. “Why?” they inquired. “Because I need some supplies.” “You mean you didn’t bring anything with you?” “I brought my shorts, running shoes and a few granola bars.” “Are you serious?” “Yes, I’m serious.” A long pause ensued.

We over-slept the next morning. This is a crucial detail because the window for summiting Pike’s Peak is small during August. That is, you can get caught in a lightning storm or blizzard if you don’t summit before early afternoon.

The first stretch of the hike was fine save the fact that I thought my heart was going to burst. Apparently this whole “acclamation” thing that real hikers talk about is serious business. We got to the half way point in decent shape. I should note that it’s called the half way point but it’s really like the 1/3 point because the next stretch of terrain is much more difficult than the beginning part. About an hour into this second portion of the hike, the temperature begins to drop and I’m thinking that my shorts, tank-top, and three dollar Wal-Mart pull-over might not get the job done. All of the sudden, lightning began ripping through the sky. Here, in this moment of fright, I gained one of my first lessons in hiking. When a 6’4″ human is walking beyond the tree line, said person becomes the tree. We were totally exposed and in a dangerous place.

One of us in the group, I can’t remember who, became convinced (probably due to a lack of oxygen) that our cell phones were conductors and that we needed to throw them down the side of the mountain. Slightly less dumb heads prevailed and we continued to walk. About thirty minutes into the lightning storm, a blizzard broke out. I’ve seen my share of snow (I grew up in a city surrounded by lakes—we invented lake effect snow) but nothing like this. It came out of nowhere. I could barely see five feet ahead of me. After another thirty minutes or so of walking in this blizzard with the lightning, we found a cave. It was like finding a pool of water in the middle of a dry desert. We huddled inside the cave (one member of our group tried calling his wife in case he didn’t “make it”) only to find there were some other hikers inside the cave. These hikers, who looked professional compared to the look-what-the-cat-drug-in crew before their eyes, were warming themselves with special blankets (I came to find out later they were space blankets). “What on God’s green earth are you doing here?” one man asked. I thought I’d be helpful and replied, “We’re trying to make it to the Summit.” I can’t repeat what he said to me. Actually I can, I just might have to attend an impromptu elders breakfast in the morning if I repeat (on this blog) what he said.

Here’s the gist of his message: you don’t belong up here. You have not prepared. You don’t have a guide (Pike’s Peak at the time was the highest climb available to people without guides); you don’t know where you are going or what you are doing. People die every week on this mountain because they think they can do this alone but they can’t.

Before you think I’m totally inept (mostly inept and totally inept are two different things), contrast that experience with another I had just a few years later after the Pike’s Peak Disaster. Right after we’d moved back to Michigan to begin full-time ministry work post grad/undergraduate school, a life-long friend and mentor approached me: “I know you’ve just finished a marathon of sorts,” he said alluding to the 84 hour masters degree I’d just completed, but I’ve got another marathon for you—an actual one.

To this point in my life, I’d been a jogger not a runner. I had not interest in doing a marathon. Except for the fact that I knew I’d get to be around Andy a lot if I decided to do this. Andy was the kind of person I wanted to be (highly disciplined, devout in his reading, terrific father/husband). I said “yes” to train for one of the more grueling events I know of, (who runs 26 miles on purpose?), because I wanted to be around Andy. Fred Craddock told an audience once, in my hearing, “I’m a six mile runner. In my life, I’ve run a total of 6 miles. Quarter mile, eighth of a mile there. I’m a six mile runner.”

The training was intense, different than anything basketball ever threw my way. Much more mental than physical. My feet bruised all over. My body went through all kinds of exhaustion and cramping. I stuck with it thought because I had a great mentor, someone who’d walk me through what was coming; someone who could take to a place he had already been. I remember one Friday morning (about 4am) we met at the park to run twenty miles. Up to that point this was the longest distance I’d ever run. It rained the entire time. I was soaked to my bones. I caught a flight to Purdue University a few hours later where I was to speak at a retreat for a campus ministry. Of course, there was a mix-up, and we did not have rooms to sleep in that night.

But I smiled a big smile as I slept on the floor of that cafeteria, cold tile below my back, because I’d met the test, not with perfection, but with grit and grace. Truth be told, the actual marathon experience was a bit of a letdown. I was glad to have done it, but it was not was I’d expected. I’d envisioned the theme music to Rocky playing with Kara standing at the finish line as I passed three Kenyans on my way to the finish line. The end was hardly that dramatic. In fact, I hate my finish photo because there are a few people who, let’s just say were not in marathon shape, are in front of me in the photo making it look like they beat me when they had only run a three mile leg for a large relay team. I’m over it. Really.

It was in the preparation, that I came to like running. It was in the training that I changed.

And so it is with our life in God’s love. God’s grace drenches the entire planet. There’s not a single secular molecule in the universe. God is screaming to us, if only we could hear more clearly. But, we have to respond. Because God is not a dictator, he’s a lover. And, it takes two to tango (God and God’s people).

Adversity, suffering, pain, and trial are coming. These are the gifts no one wants. C.S. Lewis wrote “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” If we’ve been so moved by the grace of God as to prepare for what life brings our way, we don’t have to be afraid and we can begin, because of the perspective that disciplines provide, to realize that pain and suffering might actually be odd and holy gifts . After all, pain reminds us: 1) we are still alive 2) things are not as they should be 3) perhaps things can one day be as they should and 4)I am not, alone, I am not enough to get through it.

This is why these scriptures are so important to the Christian community at large: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” (Mk. 8:34). “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus,” (Col. 3:17). “Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,” (Heb. 12:1).

I had lunch with a friend recently who told me he’d never experienced sleep paralysis prior to me talking about it. This is one of the danger about talking publicly about very mysterious things. Once you set it in motion, like a cat, you can’t quite predict what will go down. A few others have e-mailed me with stories of strange dreams. Of course, the important question is always, “How does this experience square with the God of scripture and God’s purposes in the world.”

My favorite line came from another friend who, in reflecting upon the teaching, said, “I’m simply waiting for one guy to step up, say God gave him a dream, and that he’s going to marry the girl that no one else is dying to marry.” That is, in his experience, guys strangely have dreams about the girls everyone else would love to date/marry too. One of the signs that the revelation/dream is of God is if it dares you to take a risk and do something uncomfortable.

We dance in rhythm with God when we keep the Sabbath. The reason we are called to take a day of rest is simple. Humans tend to forget that we did not make the world and thus, that the world does not depend upon us. Returning to Barbara Brown Taylor, she tells a story about a friend, David, growing up in Atlanta and what he taught her about fidelity to God.

When I was a junior in high school, my boyfriend Herb played on the varsity basketball team. He was not the star player however. The star player was a boy named David, who scored so many points during his four-year career that the coach retired his jersey when he graduated. This would have been remarkable under any circumstances, but it was doubly so since David did not play on Friday nights. On Friday nights, David observed the Sabbath with the rest of his family, who generously withdrew when David’s gentile friends arrived, sweaty and defeated, after Friday night home games.

Following each Friday night game, David’s friends came to his house to describe the game in great detail. “Blow by blow” the gentiles were allowed to speak and create worlds in David’s living room. Someone in the room asked if it bothered him to sit at home while his team “was getting slaughtered in the high school gymnasium.”

“No one makes me do this,” he said. “I’m a Jew, and Jews observe the Sabbath.” Six days a week, he said, he loved nothing more than playing basketball and he gladly gave all he had to the game. On the seventh day, he loved being a Jew more than he loved playing basketball, and he just as gladly gave all he had to the Sabbath. Sure, he felt a tug, but that was the whole point. Sabbath was his chance to remember what was really real. Once three stars were visible in the Friday night sky, his identity as a Jew was more real to him than his identity as the star of our basketball team.

It is essential for Christians to create regular, intentional spaces of time in which we do not work, email, fax, clean, or do laundry. A time when we allow our hearts to settle and the voices to hush. Sabbath is a time when we remember that God made the world and rested; that He calls us to rest with him, to hear his voice, to be aware of his presence. And it is a time to remember, according to the Hebrew Testament teaching on Sabbath and Jubilee, that there will be a day when all peoples of the world will rest—not just the ones who can financially afford to take a day off. Sabbath-keeping reminds us that we are pilgrims in a foreign land, awaiting the world to become what the world was meant to be. We remember vividly that, although God made the world, the world is not the way God made it. When we keep Sabbath, we proclaim to the rest of the world that God is about the business of making things new. God needs a way of reminding us that we are no longer in Egypt, stacking bricks for the Empire. If busyness and idolatry plague our collective life, Sabbath is a means by which we can become more like the person God created us to be.

For the last few years, I’ve rigorously worked to keep a full Sabbath day in my weekly schedule. It hasn’t always been easy. Deaths, births, tragedies, miracles, and mundane duties of life show little regard for my personal desire to rest. Slowly, over time, when those things occur on Sabbath, I’m tempted to jump in and fix everything. Sometimes, when the circumstances demand, I have to get involved. Most of the time, however, keeping Sabbath convicts me that the world can run just fine without me. I see a clear role for myself in the divine story. I am important in this narrative, but I’m not the main point or the main character. Sabbath teaches me this.

Whole.

Rested.

Listening.

Attentive.

Cleansed.

This is what Sabbath is about. It creates the space in our lives for us to remember who we are. To remember that we are players in a different story.

For Jews, sabbath is a politically subversive act. I’ll say more on that later.

Jews do these things with more attention and wisdom not because they are more righteous nor because God likes them better, but rather because doing, because action, sits at the center of Judaism. Practice is to Judaism what belief is to Christianity. That is not to say that Judaism doesn’t have dogma or doctrine. It is rather to say that, for Jews, the essence of the thing is a doing, an action. Your faith might come and go, but your practice ought not waver . . . This is perhaps best explained by a midrash (a rabbinic commentary on a biblical text). This midrash explains a curious turn of phrase in the Book of Exodus: “Na’aseh v’nishma,” which means “we will do and we will hear” or “we will do and we will understand,” a phrase drawn from Exodus 24, in which the people of Israel proclaim, “All the words that God has spoken, we will do and we will hear.” The word order, the rabbis have observed, doesn’t seem to make any sense: How can a person obey God’s commandment before they hear it? But the counter-intuitive lesson, the midrash continues, is precisely that one acts out God’s commands, one does things unto God, and eventually, through the doing, one will come to hear and understand and believe. In this midrash, the rabbis have offered an apology for spiritual practice, for doing (Lauren Winner, Mudhouse Sabbath).

Stephen King is arguably the most popular fiction writer in recent American memory. In his memoir/guide to becoming an effective writer, he warns the writer that might me tempted to shape their life around their craft instead of their craft around their life.

I suggest the metaphor works well for academicians, pastors, teachers, athletes, writers, and anyone else who tends to become addicted to their “craft” at the expense of those closest to them (something I regularly confess to . . . though I have to admit that since Lucas’s arrival, I have done almost no serious writing and I’m perfectly content with that . . . for now).

King begins by talking about the massive oak desk that sat, for six years, in the center of his writing room.

For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship’s captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere. King confesses the chaos that this led to, the sheer egocentric view of life that ultimately tore his personal and family life apart.

A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put it in a large living-room suite where it had been, picking out the pieces and a nice Turkish rug with my wife’s help. In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza. They usually left a boxful of crust behind when they moved on, but I didn’t care. They came, they seemed to enjoy being with me, and I know I enjoyed being with them. I got another desk—it’s handmade, beautiful and half the size of the T. rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave . . . It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.

People often misunderstand Judaism as “salvation by works”. However, this fundamentally misinterprets the covenant relationship between Israel and YHWH. Because of their relationship, God expected them to behave in certain ways. Lev. 19:18 (“Love your neighbor as yourself”) for instance is one of the most powerful texts in all of Torah even though it is embedded in an entire section of rules, commandments, and decrees. If one reads Leviticus 19:18 as the center/heart of this particular text, the advocacy becomes clear. While some make the conservative contestation that religion remain private (i.e. “Let’s keep religion within the cult and private. Our duty is to simply keep the commandments of God.”) others make the liberal contestation that “the rules are passé, leftover relics from the faith of our grandparents. The public element (public justice) is what is the heart of true Israelite religion.” Leviticus 19 offers a third way for it is concerned with obedience to the obligations set forth and the relationship of caring for the neighbor. That is, live in these particular ways (obeying relatively minute decrees) and once you find yourself in that cadence of spiritual habit, loving your neighbor will be the natural extension. If you will keep the strict dietary laws, etc. you will be able to have an open posture towards the “other” . . . it will be impossible to have any invisible persons in your midst because you will be so attune to God’s presence.

Sabbath is a “discipline” which prepares people to do justice. You cannot truly love the poor and pray for liberation if you are not willing to practice Sabbath. Sabbath is practiced every seven days. The Year of Jubilee happens seven years times seven (Finally Comes the Poet, 49). Social justice, according to Brueggemann, is connected to personal piety devotion. The two cannot be separated. Evidently, the liberal and fundamentalist need one another! “Sabbath is the end of grasping and therefore the end of exploitation. Sabbath is a day of revolutionary equality in society. On that day all rest equally, regardless of wealth or power or need (Exod. 20: 8-11). Of course, the world is not now ordered according to the well-being and equality of Sabbath rest. But the keeping of Sabbath, in heaven and on earth, is a foretaste and anticipation of how the creation will be when God’s way is fully established,” (Brueggemann in Interpretation: Genesis, 35-6).