From Plagues to Promises

It was the first day of spring 2020 as I was rereading Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book, The Sabbath, when my eyes fell upon the word “corona” in the book. I began to realize I was not just reading this book written in 1951 but this book was reading me. I was caught up in a Larger Story bigger than the other “corona” concept that had captured the world’s attention.

While the world focused on a plague God was focused on a promise.

Many parts of the world were shutting down and ceasing from their work and interestingly enough, Sabbath means “to cease” or “to rest.” While I do not believe the virus came from God, I do believe God was using it to transform the lives of any who would slow down enough to listen. It is interesting to note that the celebration of Passover was near at this time, which also has a theme of plagues and promises.

The word corona gets its name from parts of the body that resemble a crown. While the world was crowning a virus, God was crowning a strategy of deliverance for humanity that had been inaugurated long ago when he had crowned humanity as the pinnacle of creation. After he crowned humanity God rested from his creating by crowning the Sabbath as the rest from which we were designed to live from. In fact, Sabbath was so instrumental to the creation of humanity that to not understand what it means is to partake of one of the greatest plagues that affects our world: restlessness.

Simply put, to not understand the power of Sabbath, of living from rest instead of for it, sets our world on a collision course of destruction. Without Rest we become human doings instead of human beings. With Rest we slow down to enter into the rhythms of the gift of life that not even money can buy.

Here is exactly how I came across the word corona in Heschel’s book. I was reading the following when the word corona was the last word of the sentence before it was hyphenated to finish the word corona-tion on the next line (pic at bottom). In context it read:

To observe the Sabbath is to celebrate the corona-tion of a day in the spiritual wonderland of time, the air of which we inhale when we “call it a delight.”

Ah yes, the air in which we inhale. The gift of life and God’s breath within us. While the world was yelling:

“I can’t breathe…”

God was inviting us to learn how to delight in the gift of breath we were given, to cease from all the ways we were hurting ourselves and one another, and to wake up to the gift of life we've been freely given.

With so many voices vying for our attention we would do well to slow down and listen to a Voice that can truly bring us Rest. Today if you hear this Voice, do not harden your hearts like people in the past who were led out of slavery, yet failed to enter the promise of Rest. So while this promise still remains, let us enter that Rest by ceasing from our works as God did from his. (Heb 4:1,9-10)

“Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues.” - Revelation 18:4

Speaking of another voice saying the same thing, there was a prophet of God named Bob Jones who was shown a 100 year prophecy from the 1950’s to the 2050’s. Now regardless of what you think about prophets it would be hard to deny the accuracy of his word for 2020 as he was shown a theme for each decade of those 100 year’s. What was the theme for 2020?

“The 2020’s will reveal the rest of God.”

Bob passed in 2014 so he didn't see, or did he?, that the 2020’s would begin with a worldwide Sabbath and that Rest would finally become a focus for people around the world.

All this is to say we would do well to learn about the rhythms of Sabbath. To learn that it is not just some outdated religious practice but is a Presence that is core to our existence. To live without sabbath rhythms is to live out of sync with our truest nature. Sabbath connects us to that “spiritual wonderland in time” where we remember who we really are as human beings.

For more about this theme of rest stay tuned as we will be hosting special events focused on experiencing this Rest along with practices that help us to abide in it daily. May you enter this Rest as was promised since the foundation of our world.

Writing within the Decade of Rest,

-PH