Amazing and Unexpected Gifts - Pastor Karen Reflects on Sabbatical

June 2009:  I had stopped the car to take stock after my next turn took me off the main highway onto a dirt road.  It went across a high desert – the cold kind – barren, empty, and forbidding.  It looked like the craters of the moon.  The road ahead ran to the horizon and disappeared over a rise.  It took all my courage to follow that road – and then it led to a gate marked “Private – do not enter.”  I stopped the car again and once more faced the choice – did I disobey the sign and go through, or would I turn around and give up?  I finally opened the gate, drove through, and over another rise came to the retreat called Ring Lake Ranch near Dubois, Wyoming.  It was the next stop on my sabbatical, and it brought me the most amazing and unexpected gifts. 

God knew how tired I was – not just physically but spirit-wise.  My tired heart wanted to rise and celebrate and welcome life, but I felt I could only sit on the sidelines.  Despite all the worries and uncertainties of sabbath time away, the congregation I served had honored me with time away for a sabbatical, a retired friend supplied worship leadership and preached for those weeks, and so I left on my drive to the Pacific and back again. 

I had always loved spring wildflowers, but the Spring just didn’t seem to reach my soul anymore.  This beloved work of ministry had all but wrung the passion from my being. And now God smiled and winked at me. This dry desert land had had rain the week before I arrived and as we went through that retreat together the desert bloomed.  Flowers burst out of impossible places.  The thirsty land became a garden, and through God’s gift the Spring re-entered my heart.  The topic of the retreat at Ring Lake Ranch?  Sabbath!  We talked about the rest we are given in Sabbath when we have time to simply lay down in the hands of our God and don’t have to prove our worth. 

There were so many wildflowers during that sabbatical I felt that God answered my prayers to recover the Spring in my soul.  There were lovely adventures, and conversations with other faithful folk, and most of all - the amazing renewal.  I came back to the congregation I served so eager to jump in and do the work I was called to do, by the grace of God and with the amazing gift of sabbath time resting in God’s love!  God gave me rest and renewal and I lived the miracle of Isaiah 35:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
    the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly
    and rejoice with joy and shouting….

Strengthen the weak hands
    and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
    “Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God.”

- Isaiah 35:1-2


I am so grateful that our synod is implementing this sabbatical policy to give our synod staff the gift of time to rest in the hands of the God who loves us and desires us all to have abundant life.  I believe God will use that sabbath time away to bless our synod staff with renewal and thereby bless all of us in our life together following the Lord Jesus.  Thank you, dear friends in Christ!

Karen Jewell-vanBuskirk, retired ELCA pastor in the ECSW