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Jeb’s Day of Rest

Jeb woke up with an unusual lightness in his heart, not that his heart was typically heavy. There was something different about today.

Maybe it was because today was the first Sunday of Advent. He had bought new candles for his Advent Wreath.
Advent wasn’t fashionable. Most people paid no attention to it. Even in an old-fashioned little town like Laurel Ridge, the meaning of Advent had gone the way of full-service gas stations and jukeboxes.

He rose from his bed and took a deep breath.

What other people did or didn’t do had never much mattered to him. Jeb was one of those independent souls who didn’t follow fads or bend to peer pressure. He knew who he was and what he wanted. His needs were simple and his faith was pure.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and headed for the bathroom. There was a note he’d left himself tucked into the frame of the mirror.

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
~ Psalm 46:10

That could be said to be his motto in life.

Jeb wasn’t one for wasting a lot of words or getting caught up in frivolous tides of emotion. He waited and watched. He only said as much as he felt was needed to make himself understood. He kept to himself and lived his life in quiet contemplation.
Advent wasn’t the only thing he looked forward to this time of year.

He missed his mom’s annual baking marathon.

When he was a kid, his mother would bake cookies throughout the holiday season. The kitchen was warm from the oven’s heat and the abundance of his mom’s love. The aroma of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves blessed the house like sacred incense wafting from the oven and the trays of cooling cookies.

Mom and Dad had long since retired to the perpetual summer of the Gulf Coast, but Jeb still longed for the simple love that his mother baked into every batch of cookies. Store-bought cookies simply weren’t the same. Baking by himself for himself was just as empty.

What he really wanted was a decent batch of cookies. Mom still sent him a sampler every year, but the magic seemed to fade in transit. The recipes were the same and the love was clearly still there, but it just didn’t feel the same to get a parcel of three-day-old cookies wrapped in wax paper.

He wasn’t lonely, exactly. Jeb didn’t much care for crowds or company of any kind. He enjoyed his simple, solitary life.
He enjoyed sculpting wood as much as people seemed to enjoy buying the work of his hands. He had started off with word of mouth referrals from satisfied customers. His cousin, Brendan, had set up a web page to help him take orders and showcase his work.

Having showered, Jeb picked up the devotional booklet he’d gotten from church and turned to the page for today. He lit the first blue candle. He had purple candles last year but he opted for blue this year.

He stood back and watched the flame dance on the wick as he read the booklet for inspiration before heading out to church. He snuffed the candle and finished getting dressed for church.

Jeb wasn’t a Sunday best kind of guy. He wasn’t a slob. Mom would never allow that, but he felt that casual attire was more appropriate. It felt like a kind of second home to him. There was community and love and comfort there. Why spoil it with a stiff suit and a tie? God didn’t care much for phonies. No point in putting on airs in the house of the Lord as far as he was concerned.

He knew that people thought of him as peculiar. A lot of people didn’t know if he was even capable of speaking since he rarely did.

He would simply take his place wherever there was space and enjoy the hour of peace and inspiration that church provided him. The music touched his soul. The prayers were familiar and comforting. The sense of communion with all of these people whose company he typically avoided was less like a threatening mob and more like a group hug. As much as he preferred to avoid crowds, this was one throng that he felt truly at home with.

Before he knew it, church was over. He slid quietly from the pew and departed from a side entrance. It wasn’t that he wanted to avoid the pastor’s gregarious chatter, but, well, that’s actually exactly what it was. Pastor Greg was a cheerful man. It seemed like a job requirement when Jeb came to think of it. Just the same, it was not something he was able to subject himself to.

Standing in line, people might try to chat him up. Shuffling like lemmings toward the chipper reverend’s spot by the front door, he’d be assailed from every direction. He hadn’t been fond of it as a kid, hanging on his mom’s coattails. He was even less interested in it now that he was a self-sustaining adult.

But that wasn’t entirely true, was it?

Nobody was truly self-sustaining. We all depend on God for our first and final breath, he thought. Whatever we enjoy in life might be partially of our own making, but ultimately it was God’s to give or take. Whether it be things or the company of family and friends or even our very lives, it was God’s grace that made it possible.

To believe otherwise would be prideful and potentially blasphemous. He knew the pastor wouldn’t be offended by his hasty departure but Jeb had absolutely no desire to offend God with conceited self-congratulation.

His skill in woodwork was a gift from God and he did his best to use it to praise Him so he would be blessed with a good living and a well-stocked pantry. He had a couple of outstanding projects but those would need to wait until tomorrow. Today was the Lord’s day.

The first Sunday of Advent. The Sunday of Love.

Love?

Is that what he was feeling when he saw Aundrea at the bakery yesterday? Is that what he had been feeling when he went to see her at her softball games when they were kids? Is that what was missing from his life?

He didn’t really feel that anything was missing until this very moment. All he really wanted was a warm plate of cookies that were freshly baked with all the scents of the holidays and all the love his mom had infused into every batch.

He had always thought of Aundrea as a friend, but he felt a little creepy asking her to bake a fresh batch just for him in hopes that the love he was missing would be there. He felt ashamed for even considering it. Maybe, if he got to the bakery a bit earlier, he’d hit on a batch that was both warm from the oven and from the joy she seemed to derive from her work.
That’s what had always attracted him to her. She did what she did with uninhibited joy. He hoped it would show up in her cookies if he got there early enough. He hoped she could help him put a bit of the joy back into his Advent preparations.
After all, what were friends for?