Noticing the Dissonance

Rev. Ellen Alston
I remember one day as a youth director when a prominent family in the church took me to the country club for lunch after the Sunday morning service. I listened as they spoke of their dismay that “Sunday Blue Laws” no longer existed, that the Sabbath was not being honored by the community at large, and I watched as no less than 3 different persons served us at the table of leisure, comfort, and abundance, made available only by the toil and work of others on that Sunday. I couldn’t help but notice the dissonance between our conversation and our context. I can’t help but notice the dissonance right now between my writing a blog about Sabbath while at “work” on no less than a half dozen urgent fronts, with no tidy end in sight, and whatever Sabbath rhythm I may attempt proving to be feeble at best. I notice the dissonance of my voice beneath an ashened brow singing “create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,” the dissonance between who I am and who I hope to be.
Thank God I am not the only one (or even the first one) to notice! Before I was even aware of the day, or the dirt, or the damage, or the destination, the One who made me was making note and making a Way. The One who flung the heavens and hung the stars, who sorted the light and the dark (resisting the laundry pun here), who sculpted mountain and valley and poured waters to fill and flow, who placed grass and trees and graced the land with buffalo and bees, who drew the garden and the breeze, notices the details and their dissonance: “Why are you hiding?” “Do you want to be made well?” “You are forgiven.” “Who do you say that I am?” “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Follow me.”
…and continues creating, even, or perhaps especially, in the dissonance.
Create in me, O God, a place, a space, for noticing the dissonance. For then and there, a new creation begins…