“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19, NIV84)
Every now and again, you experience a day that is so incredibly perfect, you just can’t talk about it right away. It’s the kind of day you just have to treasure until you get enough distance that talking about it no longer feels like wrecking something sacred.
The Professor and I had a day like that, a couple months ago. We called it the “pseudo-epic Sabbath adventure” – only because the original plan wasn’t possible, and let me tell you – the original plan had been seriously epic. Someday. (Maybe.) But the pseudo-epic adventure was pretty awesome.
As long as I’ve truly known him (has it really only been seven amazing months?), the Professor has been trying to figure out what’s fun. He says the things that used to be fun for him aren’t anymore, but he hasn’t been able to figure out what is fun. He also doesn’t really get my whole “road trips with Jesus” thing – sitting alone in a car for days and going God-only-knows-where doesn’t appeal to him. (I get that – but it’s not the long hours of driving that make those trips amazing; it’s letting God surprise you with the things He’s planned – the moments you experience that you never would have if you hadn’t just picked a direction and gone to find out what was there.)
And as long as the Professor has known me, we’ve been talking about Sabbath. The importance of having a day that’s not just a day off from work, but a day of rest and joy. For a Sabbath day to be truly great, that rest and joy should be experienced in the context of encounter with God, great food, and great company. The Sabbath is a day that celebrates life and redemption and creation and God – and you can’t celebrate alone, because that’s lame. So we picked a day to celebrate – something I desperately needed to do – and I started planning. I had three goals: choose places to go that the Professor might find to be fun. Choose things to do that would immerse us in Sabbath rest. And create an experience that mimicked the best parts of a road trip with Jesus.
photo courtesy of ©Depositphotos.com / maxym
The day itself was amazing, but one of the most fun parts of it for me was the planning. Road trips with Jesus are spontaneous. I generally have no real idea where I’m going or what’s going to happen next. I just get in the car and go. But I wanted to be sure it would be a fun day. Therefore, some sort of planning seemed smart. So I picked seven places in Chicago that I thought might be fun. Did some research on fun places to go: restaurants, coffee shops, museums, etc. Created a sub-set of options for each of those seven places, wrote them on (yes, color-coded) pieces of paper. Showed up at his house, coffee in hand (because all good days start with coffee) – and asked him one question: “Choice or chance?”
The Professor picked “chance” (I was actually kind of banking on that) – and so for the whole rest of the day, whenever we got to a crossroads, he just picked something else without knowing what it was – and in that way, we let God direct the day. We went a lot of places. First Navy Pier (I had never been) – where we saw part of the Chicago Match Cup (no idea what was happening, but it was a perfect day to sit by the Lake, so watching people sail was a good excuse), and wandered through a museum full of amazing Tiffany windows. Then we walked to Lincoln Park. (This might have been a mistake… except that the walk along the Lake was beautiful. It was, however, a rather … um, long … walk.) Saw the Zoo and the gardens. And a really big metal cow. Walked all the way to the other side of Lincoln Park to get dessert at a place called Sweet Mandy B’s and then didn’t get dessert. Took the train back into the city and went to the children’s floor of the Chicago Public Library to learn three new things about werewolves. (Don’t ask.) Saw a street-corner puppet show. Found a charming neighborhood called Wicker Park and went to a record store and to a fancy Italian restaurant with bizarre patio furniture – where we did not actually eat anything. Discovered The Boring Store (which was sadly closed); it claims not to be a secret agent supply store. (I can neither confirm nor deny this.) Drove home. Stopped for dinner.
Thirteen and a half hours of sheer amazingness. It was the perfect blend of everything. Art and music. Time by the Lake. Talking for hours. And… not talking – just… being. I learned things about the Professor that I hadn’t known there were to know. Went places I’d never been. And found joy – deep and incredible joy.
It was the perfect day. And we’d gotten up that morning without a clue where we were going or what we would do all day. We just wandered through it with Jesus. And it wasn’t anything deep, for the most part. I wasn’t overly aware of His presence with us. But the kind of joy that marked that day only comes from Him.
As I’ve been treasuring and pondering that day over the past few weeks, I’ve come to a few conclusions:
1) If anyone ever took the time to plan a day like that for me, I would absolutely flip. It would be the greatest gift ever. So getting to do that for the Professor was, in itself, a gift. Knowing that he had a good time made it even better.
2) As an introvert, there are few people on the planet that I can spend that much time with and not feel drained. Spending time with the Professor energizes me in a way that I suspect only an extrovert could understand. (So I don’t get it at all.) But I am blessed beyond measure by his friendship, for so many reasons. (I thought for a moment about quantifying that. “At least 252.” But then he’d probably want to know what they were…)
3) I forget too often that “road trips with Jesus” and Sabbath adventures don’t have to be epic. That they can be pseudo-epic and still be amazing. There will always be epic moments – our lives tell a story, after all, and all good stories have their epic moments – but if we pay attention, there are hints of glory everywhere, and every Sabbath day holds unlimited potential for deep moments of joy, no matter how we spend it. I found one such moment this afternoon, sitting at a coffeehouse, listening to Ricky Nelson, drinking café au lait, and writing. It was only a four-hour road trip, not the four days I might have wished for – but it was worth it. It was, in its own small way, perfect. Because it was rest and joy in the context of great food, beautiful surroundings, doing something fun, and spending time in amazing company (His).
Some would look at the events of our pseudo-epic Sabbath adventure and say it was all happenstance. But I don’t believe it. It was a day that in the broad scope of things mattered – immensely – to me. It wasn’t happenstance. It was hapynstance. I still don’t fully understand why. And I don’t need to. I’m just treasuring it – and pondering. Joyfully.
