And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food…
Genesis 2:8-9
At the beginning of Genesis 2, we’re told that the Lord plants a garden. It’s an interesting thing to do as a first action following the creation of the world. In fact, it’s really something that deserves to be thought about.
It’s been a while since I’ve written something for this blog. A week of midterms followed by a week of Spring Break and then followed by a week of quarantine has made this week memorable and unique all the same.
When I left for Oklahoma to be a part of Campus Christian Fellowship’s service week over Spring Break, I did not expect to have the world inundated with a panic over a global pandemic during my absence. I did not expect universities across the nation to shift all of their coursework online over a matter of days. But most of all, I did not anticipate such an unexpected Sabbath.
It’s the end of finals week and I, quite frankly, am dead.
I have subsisted this week off of a surprisingly low amount of sleep, and embarrassingly high amount of cramming for testing, and a worryingly increasing amount of caffeine.
It has quite possibly been one of my best weeks in college so far.
He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life… Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.
abraham joshua heschel, The sabbath
One of the authors I have taken great pleasure in reading lately has been Abraham Joshua Heschel. If you haven’t heard of him, Heschel was a prominent Jewish rabbi, theologian, and professor during the 19th century. He authored a number of books – most notably his treatise on the importance of a holy day, The Sabbath, in which he compares that holy day to a “sanctuary in time,” one that we are called to uphold so that we may find ourselves coming closer to God.
You have a nice bottom, too.