sabbath as attitude

As I prepare for a workshop on sabbath I have been reading and reading and realize that calling or vocation are intrinsic to understanding work and rest.

John Ortberg in If you want to walk on water, you've got to get out of the boat writes

• Fear is not an adequate excuse of the tragedy of an unopened gift ... water walking requires not only the courage to take a risk, but also the wisdom to discern a call ... The line between "Thou shalt not be afraid" and 'Thou shalt not be ridiculous" is often a fine one and not easily located.
• Knowing when to get out of the boat and take a risk does not only demand courage, it also demands the wisdom to ask the right questions, the discernment to recognize the voice of the Master and the patience to wait for his command ...
• Callings are usually not easy to discover. You will have to be ruthlessly honest about your gifts and your limitations. You will have to be willing to ask hard questions and live with the answers... You will have to be willing to let some dreams die a painful death.

There is nothing logical rationally sound about my chosen path, other than it is path that I am drawn to because I hear the Master's voice.

Dean Brackley writes in The Call to discernment in Troubled Times

• Inner Freedom [as call] is not the total absence of disordered desire. Otherwise, no-one would qualify. rather, it means being able to overcome contrary desire, especially disordered desire, when we have to. That requires ordering our desires, or rather allowing God to order them, like a magnet pulling iron fillings into line, and enlist them in single-minded service.

• The call is something people experience in real life. It comes in the form of consolation, drawing them to a freer, more generous way of life ... A vocation to service is a lifelong commitment that is fleshed out in concrete commitments that project into the future.

Knowledge of self and knowledge of God are commensurate with life direction. They are also intrinsic to understanding why some people do nothing and others everything and also understanding why the former have no peace and somehow the latter neither. When you understand your call and work within that call, and within human limitations and correct understanding of role, then workaholism or acedia (spiritual laziness or sloth) become conscious actions. Remember falling out with God is both action or inaction, i.e. failure to act. Peace comes working within a complete understanding of work and rest, I think.

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