This week I was in California moving my son Joshua into college.  The “resistance” I felt is the break in my routine of sitting in my favorite spot in my backyard.  During my sabbath, it’s a time of solitude and prayer and it was broken.  Fasting might be a challenge as well this week but Tammi, Joshua, and I chose Thursday and we stuck to it.

Remarkably Sabbath was “easy” even though I wasn’t in my usual spot at home.  I think taking sabbath has become such a natural part of my weekly routine that it really came naturally.  I started at 3:00pm on Monday and first thing on Tuesday morning I woke up before everyone else to sit in the quiet to read the Bible (John 11), practicing “lectio divina” (read, meditate, pray, contemplate) and prayed for the living word to speak in my life.

Reading John 11, I journaled the following, “as we entrust Joshua to God in college, we cannot direct or know Joshua’s journey but as in John 11:16 we can go, trust, and submit ourselves to God’s plan, whatever it may be.”  In John 11:16 the apostle Thomas says to the others “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” in response to Jesus saying that they will go back to Judea where the crowd tried to stone him.  I believe that Thomas was modeling a faith unto death to follow Jesus.  Even when we cannot know the outcome or even have doubts about the future, we obey and trust in the LORD’s plans for us. (Jeremiah 29:11)