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Reimagining Rest | You Are Made for Delight

The Garden Church – Sunday Teachings

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  1. So Pastor Josh today is going to be wrapping up our series on

  2. reimagining rest. I wish it could last forever

  3. because it's been so great. And so this morning's reading

  4. comes from Isaiah 58. 13 through 14, it's in your hand out if you

  5. keep your feet from breaking, the Sabbath and from doing as

  6. you please on my holy day if you call the Sabbath a delight and

  7. the Lord's holy day. Honorable and if you honor it

  8. by, not going your own way and not doing as You please or

  9. speaking Idle Words, then you will find the joy in the Lord

  10. and I will cause you to ride and Triumph on the heights of the

  11. land and feast on the inheritance of your father.

  12. Jacob for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

  13. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks Becky.

  14. Hey everybody. Welcome again to reality.

  15. Gonna get myself situated here. If we have not met, my name is

  16. Josh, I'm one of the pastor's here, our communities are just

  17. over a month into merging. We had two churches the table

  18. and reality which have come together.

  19. So lots of people that I'm still getting to know if I don't know

  20. you yet. I'd like to we Endeavor to be a

  21. family that can really journey together through the highs and

  22. the lows that can can share and learn.

  23. Practice the presence of Jesus together.

  24. And so if if you aren't connected here, whether you're

  25. an OG been here since day one, or this is your first time, we

  26. just want to say, welcome, we'd love to help you get plugged in

  27. and connected well. So come grab me after the

  28. service is what I'm trying to say as as backyard.

  29. He said this morning we are wrapping up a series on

  30. reimagining rest. We have officially made it to

  31. summer in Boston, as you can feel very Clearly in this

  32. Auditorium right now, it is starting to get warm and

  33. starting it muggy out there and school is out.

  34. You know, many of us are shifting or downshifting or at

  35. least adjusting into a new phase in a season.

  36. And so we've been looking at scripture to tell us both about

  37. rest in general and also about Sabbath in particular to really

  38. look at and consider the scriptural practice of Sabbath

  39. to see how it informs what it looks like for us to In the way

  40. of Jesus. Now I know that Sabbath isn't

  41. something that is familiar to all of us.

  42. It's not something that I grew up practicing, even even as a

  43. Christian. So to put it simply Sabbath, is

  44. it's a day of rest. It's a 24-hour period, each week

  45. that set aside to stop to rest, connect and worship for the

  46. Jewish people in the Hebrew Bible, Sabbath was a command,

  47. but for us, it's an invitation, an invitation that helps us.

  48. To resist the defaults of our culture and live more fully into

  49. the way of Jesus. And, and this morning, as we

  50. wrap up this series, in particular, I want to invite us

  51. to consider what it looks like to practice Sabbath as Delight

  52. to practice Sabbath as the light.

  53. But before we turn our attention to that, I have an exercise for

  54. you all, we're going to do some reflection this morning.

  55. So if you have a journal and pain gold star for you, pull

  56. that out right now. If like most of you you don't

  57. the notes app on your on your phone should work, just fine.

  58. Pull that out. You can feel like I'm is this

  59. literally, it's attached to my shoes.

  60. I'm taking this thing off. Okay.

  61. I was like why is this chord following me?

  62. Um, but go ahead and grab something to journal with, to

  63. reflect with the the backside of the Liturgy handout works fine

  64. or worst case you can make a mental note, but I'm going to

  65. ask a series of questions and you won't have time.

  66. We're going to go through and pretty quick, you won't have

  67. time to actually write them down, but just consider them in

  68. your mind. And then make a note, you may,

  69. you may just jot down a single word, that cues something for

  70. you. We're just kind of doing a

  71. mental inventory, this morning around rest.

  72. So, first question for you, is this what addressed look like in

  73. your family growing up, what address look like in your

  74. family, growing up? Where their physical space is

  75. dedicated to connection and conversation for you.

  76. Maybe around the dinner table, a fire pit or a front porch where

  77. there any physical spaces that were really dedicated to

  78. connection and conversation in your family?

  79. And where there are certain times when work or distractions

  80. were out of balance spaces, when the TV was off, phones were

  81. away. This was a dedicated time.

  82. Were there any rituals that were part of rest for you?

  83. Maybe it was a place, you'd go a tradition of some kind in your

  84. family or even a meal that you would share together.

  85. That symbolize or indicated. Hey, this is a, this is

  86. distinct. This is different from our usual

  87. Cadence. This is a moment of rest.

  88. And how often did you rest growing up?

  89. Was it every evening just on weekends, maybe every few

  90. months. Maybe it all came to one

  91. vacation that happened once a year.

  92. What was the Cadence of rest for you?

  93. Who did you rest with did rest look like time alone or with

  94. others and and if with others who was present for that was it

  95. just you know your immediate nuclear family did extended

  96. family, participate. Was there an auntie or an uncle

  97. or a grandma or a grandpa who is regularly part of that was your

  98. church Community part of your rhythms of rest.

  99. And anyway who was who was invited, who went on vacation

  100. with you, who participated in your your times of rest

  101. And what did these times away? Look like, where they slow and

  102. quiet or filled to the brim with Adventure and experiences.

  103. Or was it just normal routines with dad's sending emails from

  104. somewhere else, right? What did what did these times of

  105. rest? Look like

  106. Last question. How about now?

  107. what does rest look like for you today in this, in this moment,

  108. the season this year and where do you notice parallels between,

  109. how you rested growing up your family culture and what your

  110. current practices are All right, group time.

  111. So everybody turn to a neighbor, some of you who are sitting by

  112. yourself and have to slide, but grab somebody else nearby and

  113. we're going to take one minute to share.

  114. One thing that you're noticing about how you rest, okay?

  115. So turn to a neighbor and share. One thing that you're noticing

  116. about how you rest. We're going to take one minute.

  117. So groups of two or preferred 3 & A Pinch will do.

  118. But one thing that you're noticing about how you rest will

  119. take one minute, We're halfway through so second

  120. person, if you haven't started already.

  121. Okay, five seconds. And I'm going to start talking

  122. again. So everybody, thanks for thanks

  123. for taking just a minute to reflect, you know, it's

  124. interesting. I think so often.

  125. We're not actually aware of our culture of some of our values of

  126. our rhythms until we take a moment to step back and actually

  127. reflect. It's so interesting to notice

  128. the ways that the things have lived just under the surface up

  129. until we take a chance to look at them.

  130. When I did this reflection, it was striking to me how little

  131. rest as part of my family culture.

  132. Candidly, I don't think that I'm particularly good at rest.

  133. I'm still working on this. This is something I'm figuring

  134. out. My typical practice has been to

  135. work furiously, right up until whatever that break is.

  136. That is scheduled, in fact, sometimes I think I work extra

  137. hard because I know I have a break coming and so I'll go

  138. flying up into it and then just crash into it, totally depleted

  139. and exhausted. In fact, sometimes this has been

  140. bad enough that Actually like day one of vacation, I will get

  141. sick. This was a joke for a little

  142. while, not a very funny joke because it happened like two or

  143. three years in a row and it was like, wow.

  144. Okay, I'm really like, I'm waiting for vacation and just

  145. trying to get there and then slamming because anybody else

  146. had any experience like this just me, okay.

  147. See you in a few hands out there.

  148. You know, another thing that I noticed about how I rest is I

  149. considered this is that I'm I'm a maximizer because like I want

  150. to Um, eyes all the time. I want to make it as meaningful

  151. as possible. Which for me means having as

  152. many experiences with the people, I'm with, as we can

  153. possibly Jam in, this was showing up.

  154. Unfortunately, on my recent family trip to spend time with

  155. my family in Atlanta Allie and I and Ava went down to be with my

  156. parents and my brother and his family and you know, I was the

  157. stand or the Taskmaster, I don't know, for doing all the things

  158. right. It was like Okay, let's go to

  159. the pool. Let's take the kids to an indoor

  160. play Space. Let's, let's go to the park.

  161. Oh, it's nap time. Great!

  162. Let's get in a board game. Let's, let's have Mom, share,

  163. like, her whole life story. Let's, let's do all the things

  164. and at one point my Dad pulled me aside and he's like, hey, I

  165. don't know if you know this, but your brother's annoyed with you

  166. right now, maybe it hadn't occurred to you, but we're like

  167. supposed to be on vacation and you're rushing everyone all the

  168. time. Like this is not, this is not

  169. fun for the rest of it. Could you like chill out a

  170. little bit? Oops, you know it was it was it

  171. was another another reminder of what it looks like when my

  172. defaults are on autopilot and my, you know, my intentions were

  173. good. I wanted us to spend meaningful

  174. quality family time together, but I wasn't creating what I

  175. wanted. I was just going with the

  176. defaults of my wiring and and I would even say of our culture

  177. Because, you know, as I look around, we live in a hustle

  178. culture, do we not, you know, it's kind of as kind of a Wiz

  179. Khalifa Work Hard Play Hard kind of a thing, right?

  180. It's we go hard hard at work, and then we go hard hard at

  181. play. And this, this works for me

  182. naturally because this is my natural wiring, but, but it gets

  183. tiring. I mean, Boston is an ambitious

  184. striving, hurry place. If you're from here, you may not

  185. even realize that fully until you go.

  186. Go somewhere else, but we fill our lives up, we serve on boards

  187. in our free time and take night classes to get another degree.

  188. You know, we have our kids enrolled in 17 different

  189. programs so that every free minute is scheduled, we're going

  190. and going so fast. And then when we get to

  191. vacation, we go hard with vacation to our lives are full

  192. of good things but they're they're overfull packed to the

  193. brim and overflowing In Christian tradition, playing

  194. hard has another name. Gluttony.

  195. In the 4th Century, evagrius of pontus was a Christian monk from

  196. modern-day turkey, who was a student of scripture and people

  197. and he was, he was really reflecting on observing human

  198. Tendencies and behaviors and both in himself and his others

  199. and he began to catalog. And categorize some of the

  200. disorder desires that he saw in scripture, and playing out all

  201. around him. And, and one of these impulses,

  202. that if a griest noted was gluttony, Now, when I hear the

  203. word go out the I just think about overeating.

  204. But for evagrius gluttony wasn't just or maybe even primarily

  205. about food consumption. Gluttony was about a posture of

  206. the soul that sought to satisfy longing.

  207. By maximizing pleasure.', the soul that sat sought to satisfy

  208. our longing by maximizing pleasure.

  209. This morning, we're in Isaiah Chapter 58 and and this text in

    Isaiah 58 chapter mention

  210. our in scripture is part of kind of a broader conversation in the

  211. final movement of this, whole journey that Isaiah takes this

  212. on in, which he is contrasting, the wicked and denouncing their

  213. way of life. And he's contrasting that with

  214. the people of God, with the righteous and the way of life

  215. that God invites us into And before we get to the prophets

  216. commandment on Sabbath, which was read for us earlier in

  217. Chapter 58, the prophet is going off on the wicked, he's

  218. announcing their behavior, their false religion.

  219. And one of the things that he denounces in chapter 56, 11 and

  220. 12 is, is he denounces their practice of gluttony?

  221. He doesn't use that word, but he describes the wicked as, as like

  222. dogs with Mighty appetites who never have enough.

  223. It goes on to caricature them and you can almost hear kind of

  224. a mocking tone in verse 12. When he says, come each one

  225. cried, let's get wine. Let's drink our fill of beer and

  226. tomorrow will be like, today or even far better.

  227. I think I heard that driving home through Southie last night

  228. like okay, no, no shade to Southie.

  229. But, you know, like sometimes this is a real thing that's

  230. still happening in our culture, isn't it?

  231. An ancient Eastern mythology, there is the concept of the

  232. hungry, ghosts. Some of you may have heard of

  233. this, the hungry ghosts is this mythological creature.

  234. That has a cavernous belly, a cavernous stomach, but a tiny,

  235. and shriveled neck, and mouth, and because of this bizarre

  236. configuration, the Hungry Ghost is always hungry.

  237. It's ravenous, it's eating eating eating constantly

  238. indulging and indulging and indulging in no matter how much

  239. it eats it can never be satisfied, it can never be full.

  240. I think evagrius was thinking about this kind of thing when he

  241. wrote If you give yourself over to the desire for food, nothing

  242. will suffice to fulfill your pleasure for the desire for

  243. food. It's a fire that ever takes in

  244. and is ever in Flames. This dude lived a long time ago,

  245. but he knew what's up and some of you just sidebar for the

  246. Nerds out. There evagrius is thinking, went

  247. on to become foundational for both, the Theology of the seven

  248. deadly sins, and the Enneagram Which many of you are familiar

  249. with but this is so much of our culture.

  250. It's a chasing more faster. Better bigger, trying to

  251. maximize pleasure by consuming more eat more food, do more

  252. things, buy more stuff, visit more places collect all the

  253. experiences. I think this is is gluttony work

  254. hard play hard? And isn't it interesting?

  255. That these two extremes are really like two sides of a coin.

  256. They actually reinforce each other and come from the same

  257. disorder drive to fill everything the striving.

  258. This chasing. After that, we hope will somehow

  259. fill the cavernous vacuum that we feel inside based on this,

  260. this false hope that if we do enough, if we accomplished

  261. enough if we experience Off that.

  262. That somehow all of our desire will be satisfied and so work

  263. hard play hard. And it's in Striking contrast to

  264. this that we find in scripture this invitation to Sabbath in

  265. Isaiah 58. In our text today.

  266. As I mentioned the profit is not only denouncing the wicked but

  267. he's also pointing towards a vision for the future of God's

  268. people. And as he does.

  269. So he is a he is he's inviting people into the practice of

  270. Sabbath earlier in Chapter 58. He talks about Justice and

  271. integrity, there's a lot more that we're not getting into.

  272. That is also important and I just encourage you to go read

  273. that some other time but I want to draw your attention

  274. specifically to what he says in verse 13.

  275. And Isaiah 58:13. He says if you keep your feet

    Isaiah 58:13

  276. from breaking the Sabbath from doing as you please on my holy

  277. day if you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord's Day.

  278. Honorable if you honor it by, not going your own way and not

  279. doing as you please or speaking Idle Words, then you will find

  280. your joy in the Lord. What a striking promise.

  281. The prophet here is essentially saying, if you'll set aside this

  282. one day, this one 24-hour period a week.

  283. If you'll set them apart as distinct and unique, and

  284. reserved for me, if you'll receive this practice of Sabbath

  285. not as a burden, but a gift, you will experience a fullness of

  286. joy and Delight. This word delight here, which

  287. were really keying in on this morning, refers to something

  288. that is lavish something, that's luxurious something, in which we

  289. relish, and find enjoyment, and it shouldn't come as a surprise

  290. to find the word delight in in concert with the word Sabbath.

  291. In fact, John Mark, Comer notes that the Hebrew word for Shabbat

  292. primarily means to cease or to stop, but it can also be

  293. translated to Delight. Isn't that interesting?

  294. This word has almost this dual meaning, or this dual

  295. imagination of not only stopping, but also of getting

  296. joy in God and our lives, in this world, Now, I don't know

  297. about you but I make up my hunch is that Delight is probably not

  298. the first word that you would connect with Sabbath.

  299. Right, or with Christianity, in general.

  300. I mean too often when we think of Sabbath or our faith, I think

  301. many of us, I certainly have growing up kind of imagined

  302. something glow more Grim, something where you have to kind

  303. of clenched and be a little uncomfortable, and be really

  304. devout and serious and, and somehow, you know, put on this

  305. this Pious faiths and think serious thoughts.

  306. Apparently, the people in Isaiah's time had this same kind

  307. of misconception, because actually, this is the exact kind

  308. of posture that Isaiah rebukes earlier in the chapter and verse

  309. 58, verse 5, he's poking fun at their.

  310. Gloomy participation in religious ritual and listen to

  311. what he asked sarcastically here.

  312. He says, is this the kind of fast that I have chosen only a

  313. day for a man to Humble himself. Is it only for for Bowing one?

  314. Is head like a reed for lying in sack cloth and Ashes.

  315. Is that what you call a fast today?

  316. Acceptable to the Lord. The prophet is saying here this

  317. he said God is not looking for you to just perform some kind of

  318. extreme Act of Devotion to win his favor.

  319. It's not all about how Pious and religious you are.

  320. No God is longing for an authenticity in a reality to our

  321. faith and part of that is actually a delight and a joy

  322. Sabbath. Sabbath ought to be for us like

  323. a holiday that comes once a week and and this this invitation

  324. Shinto Delight actually fits perfectly.

  325. When we have a true picture of what God himself is like, see

  326. God tells his people. If you trust me, if you trust me

  327. with this day, I will bless you in verses 11 and 14.

  328. God describes here by mouth of Isaiah.

  329. The lavish blessings that he is eager to pour out on his people.

  330. When they show up in true faith. God wants to satisfy your needs.

  331. Verse 11 tells us, you'll be like a well-watered.

  332. Garden a spring whose Waters never fail.

  333. And then in verse 14 he says alcoholic cause you to ride on

  334. the heights of the land and to Feast on the inheritance of your

  335. father. Now these words were written to

  336. the nation of Israel but I don't think God's heart beat.

  337. I don't think his posture has changed towards us because at

  338. the bottom of all, of this flowery language is a profound

  339. theological. Truth, God loves you.

  340. He Delights in you. I don't think the Church Father

  341. Saint irenaeus was off when he wrote the glory of God is Man

  342. Fully Alive. Fully Alive.

  343. What does it look like for you to be fully Alive friends?

  344. What I'm trying to tell you this morning is that God takes joy in

  345. human flourishing. God is a good dad, and he wants

  346. his kids to experience good things.

  347. He longs to bless you and for you to experience the goodness

  348. of his creation and this makes sense, because this is, this is

  349. God's posture, this is who he is, he is a God who Delights in

  350. Genesis in the pattern for Sabbath.

  351. We see that the god worked 6 days and then he kicks back,

  352. right? He took a break, he inhaled and

  353. looked at everything and said, this is very good.

  354. He said it's very good. God takes breaks, he takes

  355. moments to enjoy the goodness of his creation.

  356. So why don't we Friends. I think some of us and my myself

  357. first among them that need to repent.

  358. Like, we need to repent too. Often we go through the world

  359. dejected or uptight, anxious or judgmental.

  360. I mean, can you imagine what it would do to our witness in this

  361. city? What it would do in our

  362. families? In our friend groups, if what we

  363. were known for as followers of Jesus was joy and Delight.

  364. Can you imagine like sounds pretty nice to just live in

  365. that, right? I can imagine that that would

  366. make a pretty big difference in and this is consistent with

  367. scripture like when when Paul goes to talk about the fruits of

  368. the spirit when he, when he sets out the characteristics of

  369. someone marked, by the spirit of God, the first thing he says is

  370. love and the second thing he says is joy.

  371. Like, that's no accident. Our lives are not intended to be

  372. glum and gloomy, they're intended to be marked by a

  373. delight and a joy. Comer says, Sabbath is not just

  374. that you stop working and sit on the couch for a day every week.

  375. It's about cultivating an environment and atmosphere to

  376. enjoy your life in the world. And your God, a mode of being

  377. Last week in our series, Richard talked about how worship invites

  378. us to connect with God into a posture of worship and intimacy.

  379. He talked about how how God Delights in us and wants to be

  380. present with us and and friends. I think it's beautiful here

  381. because Delight what we're talking about today.

  382. A practice of delight and a practice of worship.

  383. Go hand in hand, right? They go together.

  384. I love how c.s. Lewis talked about this.

  385. He has this beautiful image in one of his writings.

  386. He says, any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you

  387. something about the sun and a patch of sunlight.

  388. Coming through the trees will show you something about the

  389. Sun. Which you could never get from

  390. reading books on astronomy. In the same pure way.

  391. Pure and spontaneous Pleasures are patches of God light in the

  392. woods of our experience. Have you ever considered that

  393. like Every Time We Touch a good and beautiful thing in the

  394. world, every time we experience pleasure, it is an invitation to

  395. just as when you see the sun beams fall on the forest floor,

  396. your eye is caught by the beam itself and goes back up to the

  397. Sun to travel. That same Journey from the

  398. goodness of your life, from the things that you are appreciating

  399. and finding to be beautiful to go back up to the giver of all

  400. good things. In Worship.

  401. Delight and worship are inseparable.

  402. But so many of us are missing out because we're not entering

  403. into Delight, we're not entering into worship.

  404. Instead, we're chasing trying to satisfy a soul need with

  405. physical stuff. And maybe it's like material

  406. Goods, maybe it's experiences but we're in this striving

  407. posture of more more. I need I need more.

  408. Even the goes even when we take a break like even when we go on

  409. vacation, this internal conversation this internal

  410. motivator doesn't stop right when we go on vacation half the

  411. time we're not really present, right?

  412. We're thinking about the to-do lists back home, we're taking

  413. photographs to post on Instagram and take Top to show off and to

  414. perform for some other audience. Like, we're losing the ability

  415. to actually be present in the moment and to experience the

  416. goodness of God, right here in our lives that already exists.

  417. And instead we go chasing these other bigger and better

  418. experiences. Maybe if I can go to this

  419. concert, if I could go to this place.

  420. And if I could could take this vacation and somehow, my soul

  421. would be filled. And the answer isn't in bigger

  422. or better. Because what we're solving for

  423. is not primarily a need that comes from outside of us.

  424. It's a shift that we need to make inside of us.

  425. I'm not trying to talk you out of it.

  426. I'm not trying to talk you out of a caishen friends.

  427. But what I am trying to do is I'm trying to invite you into a

  428. practice of delight. And here's the thing about

  429. Delight, Delight is not determined by the Grandeur of

  430. your experience. This is really good news.

  431. Like you don't have to have some, some big momentous thing.

  432. You don't need to travel to Monaco.

  433. It doesn't demand a cottage on the cape or a villa on the

  434. vineyard, right? You can collect all the

  435. experiences. Play hard do all the things in

  436. still miss out on rest and Delight.

  437. If you're not present in it or you can experience the light in

  438. small everyday things, right where you are.

  439. So there's a beautiful illustration of this that I'd

  440. like for us to actually enter into an experience together and

  441. for this I have some volunteers strategically planted around the

  442. room who are going to become going around and passing out a

  443. raisin. You are going to need a raise in

  444. this morning. If you are a volunteer with

  445. raisins, please begin, Distributing them at this time.

  446. So there are these little boxes try and avoid germs, you can

  447. dump them, whatever is needed, once you get your raise and pass

  448. it on, you only need one and don't eat it immediately.

  449. All right. And this practice that I want us

  450. to experiment with together with actually comes from, from Dave

  451. Potter and the world of mindfulness.

  452. But I think it's a beautiful illustration of exactly what I'm

  453. talking about today. All right.

  454. If you don't have a raisin in your hand, yet, please raise

  455. your hand so that someone can find you with a raisin.

  456. Everybody needs one before we can continue.

  457. Everybody have a raisin. It's okay if you have to but you

  458. got to have at least one. All right.

  459. So I want you to just hold the, hold the Raisin in your hand,

  460. hold it out in the palm of your hand for a moment here, and I

  461. want you to pretend that you are an alien from Mars and you have

  462. never before in all of your life, seen a raisin.

  463. Really look at it. Like, I want you to examine it

  464. almost like a scientist, would Notice if your raisin has some

  465. crevasses. Some indentations.

  466. You can turn it over to see how the light hits it.

  467. And even the different shades that might be present in your

  468. raisin. Often we think of raisins of

  469. like black or I don't know, I think of them as purple, but

  470. yours might have Flex or brown or of gold as well.

  471. And this raised in here that you're holding in your hand is

  472. extraordinary. Simple thing that's kind of the

  473. point this morning, but it's also like a crazy Majestic,

  474. amazing thing. This is Raising didn't always

  475. exist as a raisin. It was a grape and a Vineyard

  476. somewhere and that grape needed certain things to survive and to

  477. grow it needed Sun, it needed soil, it needed water whether

  478. from the sky or from irrigation. If you look really closely at

  479. it, you might be able to see the place where the stem was see if

  480. you can find. Find that.

  481. The stem is basically the umbilical cord for this raisin.

  482. The place where all the nutrients from Sun and soil came

  483. and poured into it. This raisin Came To You by way

  484. of an entire ecosystem of care. Not only in the present, but in

  485. the past, there were there were plants and animals that died.

  486. There was fertilizer that all came into this.

  487. This raisin that you hold in your hand, you're looking at the

  488. fruits of years. And then this raised in while it

  489. was still, a great was picked by some labor or maybe it was put

  490. on a sheet of paper somewhere and allowed to dry.

  491. It says, on the box son made. So I suspect that it was put out

  492. in the sun and allowed to dry over the course of weeks until

  493. it got the wrinkles that we see here today and then somebody

  494. somehow they gathered this up they packaged it in some way,

  495. took it to a packaging plant, put it in these tiny little red

  496. boxes. Then it was put on another truck

  497. and taken to a grocery store. I mean, this raisin has been on

  498. a whole journey. surprisingly cheap, when you consider, So

  499. notice this raisin in a fresh way.

  500. It's a fruit that was imbued with sun and sky and nutrients

  501. the labors of Pickers and packagers, and grocery store

  502. clerks and even in the pasture and some Hospitality volunteers

  503. this morning, is it came to you, feel it in your fingers, touch

  504. it. Is there a certain way that it

  505. feels? You can kind of squeeze it a

  506. little bit, just notice the texture.

  507. Yours might be drier than mine, but mine feels a little pliable.

  508. Not hold it up to your nose and see if you can smell anything

  509. like I smell or doesn't work very well.

  510. But I can smell this raised in just a little bit.

  511. All right. Now, take the Rays into your

  512. mouth don't swallow it whole. All right, the tendency is to

  513. just pop it in and chew it but but instead we're going to make

  514. this more of a deliberate process.

  515. So I want you to just put it in your lips.

  516. Hold it in your lips for a minute.

  517. It's gonna be fun talking with the mic.

  518. You can bring it between your teeth but don't break the skin.

  519. And just roll it around. Let it visit different parts of

  520. your mouth. Allow it to roll to the front of

  521. your tongue. To the back do like a squirrel

  522. and put it in your cheek. Now, if you've been pretty

  523. careful about this, you haven't broken the skin yet.

  524. So go ahead and just gently. Tap it with your teeth.

  525. Okay, just enough to break the skin.

  526. And see if you can notice like a little burst of flavor.

  527. When that happens, it's hard to keep from chewing it.

  528. I want to chew it. Some of you already swallowed

  529. it, but just keep rolling it around.

  530. Notice the flavor, is it changes shape or presses against your

  531. palate? And when you are ready without

  532. taking big bites, take just just little the tiniest bite.

  533. You can. you can keep taking tiny, tiny little bites and and

  534. with each one, There's notice the sensation.

  535. Notice the flavor. Feel the flavor taste the

  536. flavor. You may notice it's beginning to

  537. break up in small pieces. I'm wanting to bite mine down

  538. with my molars, really hard, but I'm trying to resist that.

  539. If you haven't already swallowed it as you continue to take these

  540. small bites, you'll notice they start to get smaller and

  541. smaller. Maybe you can feel different

  542. parts of the raisin and different parts of your mouth.

  543. You can keep chewing and before before long, the raisin you'll

  544. have you'll eating it. But even when you do, you might

  545. notice that there's some like, there's a residual flavor,

  546. right? You can still taste it in your

  547. mouth. Friends.

  548. I don't know if you've eaten a lot of raisins before or just a

  549. few. Maybe this was your first

  550. reason. Maybe you, like Rashad hate

  551. raisins for no apparent reason. I don't know.

  552. But how easy would it be? To go through a whole box of

  553. raisins without having the experience that we just did.

  554. Like how many of you actually, you know, not everybody likes

  555. the flavor, right? But how many of you like notice

  556. something about a raisin that you've never noticed before and

  557. that little experience just now. I did probably a lot of us.

  558. Write a raisin is a tiny, tiny simple, not even very cool

  559. thing, right? It's just shriveled fruit.

  560. And yet it's its Majestic and it's miraculous and if you eat

  561. it like we just did. You might even find yourself

  562. delighting in a raisin of all things.

  563. And friends. This is the invitation for us

  564. today. Look, I know we're never going

  565. to be fully present in every moment.

  566. You're not going to eat every bite of food, like you just

  567. consumed that raisin? But if you just stay on default,

  568. our culture will give you whiplash and leave you anxious.

  569. You'll keep swinging back and forth between hustle on the one

  570. side and gluttony on the other, in an endless cycle that can

  571. never be satisfied. Work Hard, Play Hard Work, Hard,

  572. Play, Hard, and repeat But God is inviting us into a slower way

  573. into a radical alternative in this pattern of Sabbath.

  574. Six days of Labor. And a day of rest, and a day to

  575. not just sit on the couch, but to enter in and intentionally

  576. experienced, the goodness that he has given us to notice it to

  577. savor it to Delight in it and then to move from these

  578. experiences of delight and goodness to trace them, just

  579. like the sun beams back up to God In Worship.

  580. This friends is what it means to practice Sabbath.

  581. It's not a burden, it is a gift. It's a blessing that you receive

  582. it today. Do you practice it?

  583. Now, you consider what it looks like for you to bring even these

  584. tiny notices, maybe it's the raisins that you ate today.

  585. Maybe it's eating slowly for one meal.

  586. Maybe it's noticing the flowers or the smile and COO of the

  587. baby, right? These things that we pass by

  588. every single day without noticing and enter into Delight,

  589. The Lord says, if you'll keep your feet from breaking the

  590. Sabbath, if you'll call it a delight then you will find joy

  591. in the Lord. Would you pray with me?