Simply Blessed

First Sabbath, I wouldn’t have rested either. Maybe the Sabbath is not so much a day of rest as it is a day of joy, a day of marvel, a day of wonderment. A day of – oh my gosh, how blessed are we, how amazing is all this?  How could I rest when every big and little thing on earth is a prayer unto itself?

First Sabbath

Tell me: did you really rest?
You who made day and night
and sky that separated
waters above and below,
you who told the waters
below the sky
to stay in one place
and out of them
asked dry land,
who told the earth
to send out growing things
and then made sun
and moon and stars,
who made birds that fly
and everything that swims,
and cattle and all creeping things
and every animal untamed
and then made man and woman
and finally, supposedly, rested:
tell me: how —
in the midst of all that buzzing
and flapping
and slithering and stepping,
all that bursting forth of leaf
and fruit and stem
that never had known themselves
before — tell me:
how could you possibly have rested,
after seeing what no one
ever had seen before:
beak, hoof, pebble,
after losing yourself
in a thousand versions of blue:
water in sun,
sky against sky,
the horizon where
sky and water meet:
how did you shut your eyes,
how not keep
turning and looking?
Didn’t you long to caress
each small thing — notice
how toes work, and
stamens, and fingers?
Weren’t you hollering out in amazement?
Weren’t you so filled up glad*
you couldn’t sleep?

~Nancy Shaffer~
Instructions in Joy: Meditations

*not an error, the author did not use “with glad”, though to be sure, I wanted to add “with” … with every fiber of my body, I wanted to add it.  :)