these are the days: november

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I took this picture on one of the last days of October. The leaves were past peak, but still hanging on; now that November is in full swing, nearly all the trees are bare. The changing of the clocks seems to have sounded the knell of winter’s arrival, despite several more weeks of fall ahead. Suddenly there are only six weeks left of the year 2019, and an entirely new decade is around the bend.

It’s in the midst of all this constant moving and changing that the days have turned, for me, into the days of learning how to stop.

Did you know that the word “Sabbath” (or “Shabbat”) comes from the verb in Hebrew that means “to stop”? It’s not quite the same as the verb “to rest,” the way it normally appears in our Bibles. God didn’t “rest” from His labors so much as He “stopped.” Sabbath is an invitation to stop. To cease. To quit trying to carve out our own survival and success for a pause to remember that the real source of survival and success is Someone else.

Between my regular job, my writing, and various other projects, I got caught trying to avoid Shabbat for a bit too long and spent a few days sick in bed because of it. Even during my fifteen minute breaks at work, I’ve had a bad habit of keeping my brain busy by checking my email or listening to a podcast. It can be so hard to submit to a full stop - to release the need to find my value in my productivity and performance for even a few minutes a day and just be still.

So these are the days of learning how to stop. To sit and look out the window when I have five spare minutes before I need to leave for work. To sew quilt binding in silence when I’d normally want music or a podcast or a TV show to fill that space in my brain. To follow God’s example and not only rest, but fully cease, as an acknowledgement that the work I’ve done is good and that the Provider is even better.

Suggested Thinking