A Day of Rest and Delight as a Means of Grace
Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27 NET).
Our resistance to the idea
After a bicycle accident, Ruth Barton said she read a sentence in a book called Sabbath that said, “If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our Sabbath‒our pneumonia . . . our accidents create Sabbath for us.” Her response was, “I did not want to hear this. I did not want to consider the fact that perhaps this accident, while it was not God’s fault, was a way God was perhaps trying to tell me something. I did not want to acknowledge the possibility that it was hard for God to get my attention. I did not want to face the fact that for years I had been thumbing my nose at human limitations, behaving as though I was beyond needing a Sabbath. (It was a nice thought for retired people or people who weren’t all that busy, but I wasn’t one who needed a Sabbath).
I just did not know how to try to incorporate this radical discipline into my life in the midst of a culture that knows nothing of setting aside a whole day to rest and delight in God. . . The truth is, Sabbath keeping is a discipline that will mess with you, because once you move beyond just thinking about it and actually begin to practice it, the goodness of it will capture you, body, soul and spirit. You will long to wake up to a day that stretches in front of you with nothing in it but rest and delight. You will long for a simple way to turn your heart toward God in worship without much effort. You will long for a space in time when the pace is slow and family and friends linger with one another, savouring one another’s presence because no one has anywhere else to go. . . You will long for a rhythm of working and resting that you can count on.
During the week, your whole self will strain toward the Sabbath with thoughts like I know I can make it because the Sabbath is coming. You will emerge from Sabbath with renewed energy and hope, thinking, I can face my life now because I have rested. The Sabbath will become the centrepiece of your week, the kingpin of your spiritual rhythm. And when even an hour is robbed from you, you will grieve its loss. When you miss it, it will hurt. Or at least that is what has happened to me.” (Sacred Rhythms: Arranging our Lives for Spiritual Formation, Ruth Haley Barton).
Why have a ‘Day of Rest’ as a ‘Means of Grace’?
[The following section is taken from The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How transforming your inner life will deeply transform your church, team, and the world by Peter Scazzero. Edits and highlights are mine]
“Instead of thinking of the Sabbath as an imposition, we need to embrace it as an essential delivery mechanism for God’s love. . .it reminds us that life is about more than work; life is about God. When balanced by a Sabbath rhythm, work takes it proper place as a good, but not a god.
God commanded the ancient Israelites to let the land remain fallow for a full year every seventh year, calling it a sabbatical rest for the land. Why? So he could replenish depleted nutrients in the soil. To work the soil year after year without this rest would have left the soil infertile. The soil of our souls is not all that different. Work requires something of us; it depletes our energies, our wisdom, our reserves. If we don’t allow the soil of our souls to rest, we do violence to ourselves. As human beings, we were created for a balanced rhythm of work and rest. Over time, fatigue and exertion make it more difficult for us to live and lead from the fruits of the Spirit. But on the Sabbath, God uses rest, delight, and play to replenish depleted spiritual nutrients such as love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness. We receive his love and he replenishes us so we can bear fruit.”
What it looks like
A Biblical Sabbath (as opposed to ‘a day off’) is a “twenty-four-hour block of time in which we stop work, enjoy rest, practice delight, and contemplate God. From a secular perspective, the purpose of a day off is to replenish our energies and make us more effective the other six days of the week. Such a day off may produce positive results but is, in the words of Pastor Eugene Peterson, “a bastard Sabbath.” So let’s take a closer look at these four foundational characteristics of Sabbath.
Stop.
Sabbath is first and foremost a day when we cease all work‒paid and unpaid. On the Sabbath we embrace our limits. We let go of the illusion that we are indispensable to the running of the world. We recognize we will never finish all our goals and projects, and that God is on the throne, managing quite well in ruling the universe without our help.
My Sabbath begins Friday night at 6:00 p.m. and ends on Saturday night at 6:00 p.m. When I stop work for Sabbath, I step back from anything to do with my role as pastor of NLF Church as well as any writing or speaking prep. I purposefully do not answer e-mails, return phone calls, finish sermons, write, or complete undone leadership tasks. I avoid Twitter and Facebook since social media is connected to my work. I also step back from my unpaid work, such as paying bills, doing laundry, running errands, grocery shopping, and cleaning up around the house.
Rest.
Once we stop, we accept God’s invitation to rest. God rested after his work of creation. Every seventh day, we are to do the same (Gen. 2:1-4). We engage in activities that restore and replenish us‒from napping, hiking, reading, and eating good food to enjoying hobbies and playing sports. The key is to rest from paid and unpaid work.
Resting from unpaid work, however, requires advance planning. If I am to have any hope of enjoying a Sabbath rest, I need to set aside time during the week to attend to the routine tasks of life I won’t do on Sabbath‒paying bills, cleaning or fixing something around the house, doing laundry, and balancing the budget, etc.
What do I do for rest? I nap, go out on a date with Geri, spend time with our daughters, read a novel, watch a great movie, go for a long hike, swim, visit friends and family, or take a train to enjoy the arts in Manhattan.
Delight.
After finishing his work in creation, God pronounced it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). This was not an anaemic afterthought‒Oh, well, it’s nice to be done with that‒but a joyful recognition and celebration of accomplishment. As part of observing Sabbath, God invites us to join in the celebration, to enjoy and delight in his creation and all the gifts he offers us in it. These innumerable gifts come to us in many forms, including, people, places, and things.
As part of preparing to practice the Sabbath, one of the most important questions to consider is, “What gives me joy and delight?” This will differ for each of us, but part of the Sabbath invitation is to enjoy and delight in creation and her gifts. Geri and I both delight in the beauty and grandeur of nature ‒ the ocean, lakes, beaches, mountains, and star-filled skies. Geri is a “foodie,” so tasting, smelling, and savouring the gift of food is a high priority for us. I delight in libraries and bookstores. Geri loves cooking a fresh meal. Through any and every means possible, on Sabbath we seek to feast on the miracle of life with our senses.
Contemplate.
Pondering the love of God is the central focus of our Sabbaths. What makes a Sabbath a biblical Sabbath is that it is “holy to the Lord.” We are not taking time off from God; we are drawing closer to him. Sabbath is an invitation to see the invisible in the visible‒to recognize the hidden ways God’s goodness is at work in our lives. It does not mean we necessarily spend the entire day in prayer or studying Scripture, though these activities may be part of a Sabbath day. Instead, contemplation means we are acutely focused on those aspects of God’s love that come to us through so many gifts from his hand. . . “The world is charged with the grandeur of God” (G. Manley Hopkins). Scripture affirms that all creation declares his glory (Psalm 19:1). On Sabbath, we intentionally look for his grandeur in everything from people, food, and art to babies, sports, hobbies, and music. In this sense, contemplation is an extension of delight‒we are intentional about looking for the evidence of God’s love in all of the things he has given us to enjoy.
Before I routinely observed the Sabbath, I often returned from vacations or days off feeling somehow farther away from God. Now my Sabbath days are times I experience his love in very tangible ways that I might otherwise associate with my “work” as a pastor. For example, when I experience a sense of God’s pleasure and approval on Sabbath, I know it has nothing to do with my work-related accomplishments. This in itself is a gift that has helped me to separate my relationship with God (my being with God) from my work as a leader (my doing for God).
I hope these four characteristics will provide a helpful framework as you begin to consider what it might mean for you to practice a meaningful observance of Sabbath, but if you ever find yourself getting too caught up in the detail and logistics‒which is easy to do‒I encourage you to take a step back. Refocus your attention on the larger significance of Sabbath‒the opportunity to experience a foretaste of eternity . . . we look forward to that day at the end of our earthly lives when we will perfectly stop, rest, delight, and contemplate the glory of God. For a brief moment in time, we reorient ourselves away from this world in all its brokenness and anticipate the world to come‒how things on earth are meant to be. In a very real sense, the practice of Sabbath joins heaven and earth, equipping us not merely to rest from our work but also to work from our rest.”