Monday, June 27, 2011

Sabbath service

The following is excerpted from my personal journal:


From time to time I avoid going to church. Mainly when I know there's going to be a crowd. It was stake conference weekend, so [today] I skipped.

I've decided that on such days, I should not just lounge around the apartment--which I have done in the past--instead, I should make myself available. I should be of service to others. Today I continued my work helping [my friends] Sandy and Peter in their garden. I also got to do some more work on their chicken coop.

This evening, Sandy asked me to tally up how many hours I worked this weekend because they offered me a wage to help pay for a vacation I've been invited to go on with them... I figured I worked maybe three hours yesterday but I wasn't going to count the hours I worked today because it's Sunday and helping them was the service I offered in lieu of going to Church. I suppose one can call it a sacrament of sorts. Sacrament is defined in part "...an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual divine grace..." I don't know how divine or gracious working in a garden is. I just needed to know that I was doing something unselfish to make up for what might be perceived as a selfish act of avoiding church for the sake of my own anxieties about crowds.