It’s not something I necessarily wanted to do.
But, I came to the realization that I needed to do it. Rest. I had been running hard for as long as I could remember. Working hard, grinding, achieving, completing, and accomplishing were values that were instilled in me as a young child. My parents immigrated to the United States and landed in Chicago and started to work. They worked hard for our family, our extended family, and even for the community at large. If one of us was going to succeed it was important that we created spaces for everyone to experience success.
But the byproduct of this kind of hurried, constantly on-the-move existence was the absence of rest. True rest. The kind of rest that helps you reset. The rest actually has to be worked at. We had rest. We even had vacations. But vacations seemed like work. We had a list of things to do, see, experience, and exhaustion met us at the end of each day.
True rest was absent. Just a few months before I turn 38 I am feeling the consequence of this kind of hurried existence. It’s followed me into my marriage and how I’ve raised my kids. I’ve felt tired and it’s a kind of tired that can’t be satisfied with a nap or an extra few hours of sleep. It is the consequence of years stacked upon years of neglecting the good gift that God gave humanity to prevent this - Sabbath.
Sabbath was always a great idea but never realistic for me. I’ve heard of people “sabbathing” but I thought it was a good thing for “those people” but not something necessary for someone like me. I loved Jesus, I wanted to run hard in ministry and to take intentional time off for rest was a waste. At least that’s what I thought. Wow, was I wrong.
My realization of the need for an “unhurried” existence was gradual. It actually started much earlier than I even realized. As a child, I watched my grandfather every Sunday without fail take a nap after preaching. It was a rhythm of rest that was non-negotiable. Then I started reading Eugene Peterson who seemed to weave this theme of being unhurried, living and inhabiting space and time in fullness. But it was as I read Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heshcel’s book, “The Sabbath” that it really hit me. The Sabbath was not a nice to have, it was a need to have.
The Sabbath was a day when we would war against the tyranny of the urgent. Where we refuse to be ordered and driven by our need to create, conquer, and accomplish. Rabbi Heschel made this brilliant observation in this short book about the nature of God’s work throughout seven days. I’ve always thought that God worked for six days and then on the seventh day he stopped working and he rested. But that’s not exactly accurate. God kept creating on the 7th day. But God creates through inactivity. Rabbi Heschel says it this way: 1
What was created on the seventh day? Tranquility, serenity, peace, and repose.
~ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel ~
What God creates on the seventh day through His own inactivity is the invitation to rest in his finished word. Sound familiar? It should, it sets the stage for our resting in the finished work of the cross! But this routine of rest and peace is a way to remind ourselves that we will not be led and ordered by the constant pursuit of an untrained heart to pursue good things that can quickly become idols that capture our hearts. Sabbath is a way to remind ourselves of our finite, limited humanity. It is an avenue to acknowledge our weaknesses and take a step towards health and wholeness.
So when we participate in the Sabbath, interestingly I don’t think we stop working. We just work in a different way. A subversive way. We learn how to live in tranquility, peace, and serenity in an unhurried existence.
We return to Sabbath so we can learn to live from Sabbath.
Sabbath should be what fuels and energizes us. Not what we work ourselves to the bone to attempt to achieve and experience.
My family and I decided to participate in a 24hr period of Sabbath.
We did it for the first time last week and it was complicated. You can watch this clip to get an honest review of Sabbath (including our German Shepherd Dog, Lady.) We decided to take intentional steps to disconnect from things that fuel the desire to do and be busy. This is what it looked like for us:
We woke up on Saturday morning and our Sabbath began. It followed this basic pattern:
We marked the beginning of the Sabbath by taking all our devices (phones, ipads,) and placing them in a box
We celebrated the arrival with breakfast together as a family
We each picked a book that would be our go-to for when we got bored
We read a lot cause there was a lot of boredom
We didn’t watch any tv or use any electronics (we made an exception for music cause all our music is played through Sonos or Apple Tv.)2
We played a family game (right now we are playing “Ticket to Ride”)3
We cooked an amazing dinner together
We talked during dinner about what was hard about Sabbath and what we enjoyed
We gathered in the living room to read a family book (we are working through Ted Decker’s children’s book "Dragons”
We all went to bed
Now, the day was difficult. We found ourselves often reaching for our phones to check messages. Britt started to plan out the day but then we laughed because basically, she was trying to figure out how we could be “busy” while we were supposed to rest. There were long moments of silence and staring at each other where we had to learn to figure out how to live and be in the silence and not just try to break it with more things to talk about. We found sitting in silence in the presence of loved ones was something to be cherished.
The Sabbath for us was hard. It was a war, but it is a war worth winning at. I think there is flexibility for Sabbath to look different for different people and families. Different days, time frames, and methods.
But if a Sabbath doesn’t make you uncomfortable and costs you something, you may not be doing it right.
“Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh we try to dominate self.”
~ Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel ~
The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel; pg. 23
Sabbath actually also exposed how much of our life is run by technology. We literally couldn’t listen to music if we didn’t use some kind of app/technology. Something that really made us consider how much of our life is being run by technology.
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I started Sabbath around September last year. Resources such as John Mark comer's Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and his podcasts (Praciting the Way) on the topic, Bible Project's video and resources on Sabbath, have been very helpful. It's like you said, a war. For me, I do Friday evening to saturday evening and Saturday night as I "enter" back into the world, is actually the hardest, I'm faced with reality and brokenness (my own and of the world in general), and it's as if the whole previous 24hrs have gone waste. But come the following week, my body, mind and soul now long for that rest and transitions are not so jarring. Yes there are weeks when I've been bored on Sabbath, but learning and unlearning various rhythms, having that space to just 'be', has become transformational.
I recently heard a sermon that gave me a new perspective on Sabbath. In the Creation account in Genesis, God was working and creating for 6 days and rested (and as you point out “creating” peace and tranquillity) on the 7th day, but humans only existed for one day and then were told to rest on the next day. I have always treated Sabbath as something I must “earn” by working for a whole week, but the truth is, God asks me to rest before I work, create and generate. This reframes the importance of Sabbath for me! It is worth fighting for this rest!