<a href="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/beachpost.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-368" title="beachpost" src="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/beachpost.jpg" alt="" width="523" height="445" /></a>
<h5 style="padding-left: 390px;">Photo by Jason Berg</h5>
<strong>It's Sunday, and Jason and I spent the morning hours, when most Christians are in church, on the beach.</strong>

Well, actually we were still sleeping when some people were heading off to church, and we were out to breakfast when those 9 a.m. services were well underway. <em>Then</em> we were at the beach.

We're celebrating our wedding anniversary with a long weekend at a cottage in Saugatuck, a place we go for a week each summer with our kids. This time, we're alone, recuperating from a series of months that have been over-the-top busy and stressful.

Considering all of that, <strong>walking and relaxing on the beach, while taking in some of God's most gorgeous creation, is a lovely—even fitting—way to spend the Sabbath.</strong> But because I’m prone to feeling guilty (most often about the wrong things, I suppose), I felt a tinge of that ickiness as we consciously weighed our options and made the choice last night: sleep, breakfast and the beach over church.
<h4>Fighting through the guilt to get to God</h4>
Let me clarify—I don’t feel like I’m a “bad Christianâ€ for skipping church. Jason and I go out of town fairly often, and we don’t feel the need to hunt down a church wherever we happen to be on a Sunday.

But today was sort of different. First of all, it’s Pentacost, a fairly important day on the church calendar. Second of all, we had been invited to go to church with some friends and spiritual mentors who live in Saugatuck. <strong>That made deciding <em>not</em> to go feel more like a clear choice we were making—a choice God would clearly be disappointed in, the way parents are sure to be disappointed by choices their teenage children make.</strong>

Ugh! I <em>hate</em> that feeling—that concept of a "tsk-tsk," head-shaking, finger-pointing God. I'm not saying I think God is <em>thrilled</em> with everything I do. But I am beginning to think my understanding of how he <em>reacts</em> to me is flawed.

<strong>The problem, I think, lies in my tendency to  understand God the way I understand a person, like a parent or spouse.</strong> The faulty logic goes like this: He (God or your husband or your best friend) wants you to do one thing, you want to do something else. If you get your way, your joy is tainted by the selfishness you feel, and by knowing you will have to eventually pay that person back.

<strong>Thankfully, God isn’t like that. He isn’t at all like us, a fact I’ve been gradually absorbing these past few years.</strong>

This confused way we go about our attempts to fathom God was actually described quite well in a book I started reading this weekend. I finally broke down and opened up <em>The Shack</em>, one of those books that everyone in certain circles has been carrying on about and referencing for some time. I’ve resisted reading it, maybe out of an “everyone’s doing itâ€ rebellion, or maybe because I suspected it’s just not my sort of book. This jury of one is still out on the book as a whole (I'm only halfway through it), but I do really like this explanation by the “God characterâ€ of who she/he is—or rather isn’t:
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>The problem is that many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting it to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn’t much, and then calling that God. And while it might seem like a noble effort, it falls pitifully short of who I really am. <strong>I’m not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think.</strong></em></p>
So God isn’t like someone who says “OK, we did what you wanted to do this time, now you owe me.â€ (For the record, Jason and I don’t function like that in our marriage, either, but it's not because of our enormous, generous hearts. It's mostly because we tend to be in agreement on what we want to do/eat/watch, so it makes it easy.)
<h4>Trying to fathom what God really wants for us</h4>
As it turns out, this whole idea of church being a special holy place where people gather on Sundays probably reflects the thinking of people more than the thinking of God, too.

<strong>I'm pretty sure God’s greatest desire isn’t for us to be in a church building on Sunday mornings. His greatest desire is that we find ways to regularly commune with him, and with one another and his creation—that we can get a few steps closer to him, by bridging the chasm between heaven and earth.</strong> Often that happens in church communities, but not exclusively, by any means.

This morning, after Jason and I took a nice long walk along the beach, not encountering another person the entire time, we sank side by side into adirondack chairs, our books in hand. Eventually we abandoned the words on the page, to just close our eyes, soaking in the warmth and peace all around us.

Silence, except for the gentle waves. A mix of cool breeze and warm sun, balanced just right, making me highly aware of—and grateful—for each.

I realized, all at once, that everything happening in that moment was something our bodies, minds and spirits have been craving. <strong>I realized that’s also something God wants for us—to be whole, and healthy in body, mind and spirit.</strong> And I realized <em>that</em> is at the heart of making a holy place, a Sabbath. A time so full of pleasure there isn't room for guilt.