Reclaiming Rest

Sabbath is a funny word and has never much been a part of my vocabulary. I have talked about ‘vacation’ or ‘my day off’ or ‘taking a break’. We just don’t talk about Sabbath.

But God’s idea for human kind was not simply a vacation – which we take once or twice per year. If our only time of rest is vacation, then we won’t live very long. And I know many people who only physically go on vacation. Their body is there – at the beach, on the lake, in the resort – but their mind is still at the office, with the customers, or at the factory. They take their laptops, answer their cell phones, reply to their emails. If you vacation like this, you are not really taking a break. When I go on vacation, I don’t take my laptop. I change the message on my cell phone and set up an auto reply on my email, so that everyone who tries to contact me knows that I won’t get back to them for a few days. I don’t take with me any books about church, leadership or anything work related. Instead, I buy two fiction books (like John Grisham), my Bible and my journal. And I relax. Vacations are important, but they are not the same as the Sabbath.

God’s idea for human kind was not simply a ‘day off’ either. When I talk about my ‘day off’, what I really mean is that I’m not doing church work today, but I am doing other kinds of work – housework, changing the oil in my cars, weeding my beds. Maintaining your stuff is important, but simply substituting one kind of work for another is not the same as the Sabbath.

So, on my study break this year, one of the books I’m reading talks about the matter of Sabbath. I need such instruction because, frankly, I don’t really know how to rest. Let me quote something revolutionary (for me) that this author says.

“God created man and woman on the sixth day, setting them in a garden full of wild, wonderful creatures and delicious foods. He gave them instructions…He told them to be fruitful. But on the first full day of existence for Adam and Eve, God rested. All of creation took a well deserved break in activity. This was our first full day, a day of rest. Then the work began. From this we see an important principle of life: we are to work from our rest, not rest from our work.” (The Passionate Church, by Mike Breen and Walt Kallestad, p. 67.)

This is revolutionary for me. I had never seen this teaching anywhere before. I always thought that rest was given to recuperate from work. But, in fact, I am coming to see that rest is the beginning of productivity, not the consequence of it. I have to shift my paradigm and use rest as a way of reconnecting with God - receiving the rest as a gift from God - instead of viewing rest like a runner who falls to the ground after crossing the finish line. That’s what we normally do – we work ourselves to death, and crash when we just can’t go another step. Then, with no real spiritual rehabilitation at all, we get up and run as fast as we can again.

What if we began to see Sabbath as a way of communing with God? What if we began to use this day faithfully, every week, as a time of mental, emotional, and spiritual rehabilitation and preparation? What if we began to see our spiritual growth on these days not as a waste of time – a distraction – but the actual purpose…the point…the goal? Would we be more healthy? You bet we would. And I bet our lives would improve dramatically in many areas.

So, I’m going to really try to develop and practice the Sabbath this summer and hope that it grows into a habit that will last. And as I learn how to rest, I'll share more about that with you. But I hope that you will share what you know about Sabbath with the rest of us, too.

See you Sunday,

Brian