A Central Park for God’s people

I took a holiday last week. My sister in New York City had a baby – my first niece – and I went to help out.

I had never been to the Big Apple. Friends alternately told me that it was “just like Toronto, only bigger” and “it’s another world.” It was difficult to imagine, so when the plane landed, I was eager to see for myself.

We drove past schools where the only playground was on the school roof, surrounded by chain-link fence. Cars edged both sides of every road, like lace on the hem of a dress. The shortest buildings were seven stories tall. Every vista included a number of human-built structures and vehicles.

By Sunday, I had found city landmarks to guide me and had fallen in love with baby Amelia.

After church, we decided to take a carriage ride in Central Park, which my brother-in-law described as “every New Yorker’s backyard.” Judging from appearances, most New Yorkers were out in the yard that day.

Central Park is a massive leafy tangle of trees with expanses of grass and the occasional quiet carousel or zoo. Around Central Park, however, a concrete jungle smacks directly into every side. Real estate in Manhattan is legendarily expensive and I imagined the incredible temptation for city developers to hive off little chunks here and there of Central Park. But it remains a perfect and intact place at the very heart of the city.

Maybe it was seeing Central Park on a Sunday, with New Yorkers at play and rest in her core, but suddenly the protection of this space seemed infinitely wise to me, both a real oasis and a metaphor: Central Park is to New York as keeping Sabbath needs to be in the lives of God’s people.

In an age of text messaging and 24-hour grocery stores, we forget that the Sabbath is a command of God. We lop off sections of this Central Park in our lives, excusing our decisions by the value of the real estate.

I thoroughly loved New York but without its Central Park, it would all be Times Square. I stood in Times Square, with its larger-than-life celebrities on massive billboards, flashy stores competing to sell cheap souvenirs, and one lone Native American holding out a sign, asking for help to go back home. If New York was all Times Square, we would all need to escape from its overwhelming glitter. A life without the practice of Sabbath begins to take on such frenetic, empty, numbed qualities too.

After our last family trip to a remote cottage where there was no television, radio, answering machine or modem, I returned home thoroughly refreshed by the pause. I felt in my body and soul the deep renewal of having had time to listen to God, to enjoy good conversations with my family, and to listen to when my body said to sleep and to wake. Part of me didn’t want to climb back into the saddle again.

Then I realized that what I had experienced was a Sabbath, and that God’s intention is that on one day out of every seven we rest like this.

Just as I imagine a Donald Trump itching to grab a corner of Central Park, so there are forces within and around us that try to steal a corner of our Sabbath. Some of those forces even come from within the church, where Sunday sometimes means a whirlwind of duties. Martha-like, we forget that Mary, who simply sat at Jesus’ feet, “chose the better part and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42).

The term holiday actually comes from the words “holy day.” There is something sacred and life-giving about stepping out of our to-do list routines and driven-ness, not when the lists are completed or when we feel like it, but simply because God in divine wisdom has commanded it for us. Each week we are invited to a holiday, to find a spot on the grass in Central Park, in the backyard for all the people in God’s family.

Susan Fish lives in Kitchener, Ont. Her book, Seeker of Stars, a novella about one of the Magi, is being released by Winding Trail Press in August.