Sabbatical Reflections

“Sometimes the best way to give a punch is to step back.  But if you step back too far, you’re not fighting.” So says Eddie “Scrap Iron” Dupris (played by Morgan Freeman) in a Million Dollar Baby.  This is useful advice, not only for the boxing ring, but for the ring of life.  On various occasions in the ministry of Jesus, he withdrew to a lonely place to pray, not in an attempt to escape the fight, but as a way of stepping back in order to “give a punch”.  Wisdom demands that we learn how to dance the routine of work and rest.    If we don’t maintain our footwork, keeping some sense of space in the rhythms of life, we are either bombarded with busyness, expending useless energy in a fury of aimless activities or so completely disengaged as to be ineffective at all in the fight of faith.