Being Instructed on Sabbath Keeping

My instructor in Sabbath-keeping was not a professor or spiritual director, but a foreman at the East Chicago Inland Steel plant named Mike Paddock. His wife was the treasurer of the tiny congregation I served as a student pastor, and she wrote my salary check twice a month. Mike would deliver it along with two dozen eggs and a shopping bag full of tomatoes, cucumbers and honey dew melons.

Mike’s seminar on Sabbath-keeping occurred on a summer Saturday morning when he saw my car at the church. “What the hell are you doing here on a Saturday morning?” he asked me. “Well,” I stammered, “I’m here being available to the congregation. I’m pretty much gone all week, at school, so Saturday I’m here in case anybody needs me.”

“Let me tell you something,” Mike said. “Nobody needs you today. If they do, they’ll call you. Nobody wants to see you today. They’re busy. They’ll see plenty of you tomorrow. So go home. Cut your grass, wash your car, sit in your yard, play with your kids. Get outa’ here.” I did what he said and have tried to abide by it ever since.