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| Image by A_Peach |
Sabbath Days in a time of pandemic:
Special devotions in response to COVID-19 (Continued)
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A Greeting
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
(Psalm 146:2)
A Reading
And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.’ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
(Genesis 1:20-23)
Music
Meditative Verse
They shall carry the curtains of the tabernacle
and the tent of meeting with its covering and the covering
of porpoise skin that is on top of it.
(Numbers 4:25)
A Poem
God will enter into your night,
as the ray of sun enters
into the dark, hard earth,
driving right down
to the roots of the tree,
and there, unseen, unknown,
unfelt in the darkness,
filling the tree with life,
a sap of fire
will suddenly break out,
high above that darkness,
into living leaf and flame.
- by Caryll Houselander,
found in Little Pieces of Light: Darkness and Personal Growth,
by Joyce Rupp, OSM
Verses for the Day
Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever.
(Psalm 146:5-6)
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A whole week has passed since these special pages for the pandemic began and we are once again at the sabbath weekend days. As the routine of self-isolation and social-distancing begins to set in, ’sabbath days’ may start to feel not much different from all of the other days of the week. When there is much less for us to do than usual, how can we find ways to make the days of rest distinct and therefore sacred? One way might be to intentionally look for how God’s Creation is always preparing itself to be renewed. As we pass over the first days of spring, we might find ourselves looking forward to the ways in which we can safely take part in nature again, through a walk in the woods or sitting quietly by a river or lake. During the time that some European and Asian countries have been locked down, Creation itself has been experiencing a momentary sabbath from the onslaught of human activity; it has had a sliver of a chance to breathe. Into that ‘breath’ in some places has come new life. In the video below, we see how the canals of Venice have begun to teem with tiny schools of fish, and how along the port shores in the island of Sardegna, dolphins have come. These signs of life emerge even as Italy experiences the worst devastation of COVID-19 of any country in the world. This tension between life and death has always been a part of our biblical story. In the despair of the desert, there are manna and quails. After weeks at sea, a dove returns an olive branch into cradling human hands. Even dolphins have been a part of that story. ‘Porpoises’ appear a dozen times in the Old Testament, most often in relation to the way in which their skins were used in the making of a covering for the holy tabernacle in Exodus and Numbers. In the New Revised Standard Version of the bible it is most often translated as “fine leather”, so those porpoises disappear under the veils of language, but many other bible translations refer to ‘badgers’ or ‘porpoise’ skins. Dolphins and porpoises were known to populate the waters of the Sinai peninsula: the Hebrew word ‘tachash’ refers to a sea creature whose leathery skin was both durable and light for transport. Even in the wilderness days of worship, the hides of animals, including creatures of the sea, formed a boundary between the secular and the sacred. How can we, in our self-isolation, trust that God’s abundant life is always waiting in the shadows of despair and fear for a moment to surface in our lives? From the backyard birdfeeder to the small pots of seeds that have been lying in winter and are now gently producing sprouts, where is it in our own lives? As we make space for sabbath rest today, where will you see God's promise of new life to come?
A STORY OF LIFE RETURNING
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LC† Reimagining Justice is a project of
Lutherans Connect / Lutheran Campus Ministry Toronto,
supported by the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.
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