Sabbath is NOT Just a Day Off!
In my last blog post, we explored what the Bible has to say about the Sabbath, its purpose, and how we can apply it to our lives. This week, I want to delve deeper into the meaning of the Sabbath. As I previously shared, we were created to live in union with our Creator. Our lives were supposed to coexist with our heavenly Father. Anything less is a shadow of the existence we were designed to thrive in. However, our tendency to fill our every waking moment with restless and relentless activity leads us to the false belief that somehow, we can add God to our day, and find the gift of rest that we were created to live from.
Rather, life, similar to our rest, is a gift meant to be stewarded. There is a time and a place for both vacation and rest. And as Jesus revealed many times through his sermons to his disciples, we are called to live from rest, not for it.
In Matthew 11:28-30 (ESV), Jesus shakes up the status quo of how we are to live our lives. He invites us to surrender our attempt to carry our burdens (or hard work, full lives, or hard seasons) or to hustle our way through life,
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Imagine this, you finally have the career that you have always dreamed of, and your home is filled with the family you have prayed diligently for, yet they require more time than you feel that you have to give. And still, Jesus asks us to exchange the hustle for genuine rest. He is not asking us to take a nap or a long vacation, he is asking us to surrender our gut reaction to hustle our way through life. He is not saying that life will be easy all the time, neither is he asking us to surrender it so we can fill our time with more things. It is all about how we choose to posture our hearts in submission to His Lordship in our lives.
One thing that we all have in common, no matter what our life looks like, is twenty-four hours a day. No matter how hard we try, we cannot add to the time that God has placed us in. But one thing separates us, the way we value and spend our time. When we spend time frivolously or as if it never runs out, eventually, we run out. Before coming face to face with God’s invitation and his gift of the Sabbath, I experienced what it means to run out. I would like to say that I am a high-capacity leader. I often have high expectations and goals that I have the determination and self-motivation to complete in my determined timeline. But whether you are like me or not, you are familiar with what happens when we reach our limit. We all reach our limit eventually! We all get to the place where there is no more margin, no more breathing room, no more space to process or contemplate, there is no more air. That is where we reach our fork in the road. We reach the place where we have a choice, pushing forward, hustling past all the internal signs that point to a dead-end; or we stop. This is what we call surrender. This is where we recognize that somewhere in our journey, we ignored every single sign that pointed us to sit and be still (Psalm 46:10). It is this place where we give him permission to lead, restore, and make us whole. This is where we meet the Sabbath; where we meet Jesus, face to face.
Sabbath’s True Meaning
I want to take a moment to expand your current definition of the Sabbath. At first glance, the Sabbath can seem like a perfect opportunity to avoid the work that we do not want to do anyway or an escape from our lives. But that is not the case at all. The Sabbath is a choice to participate in what God is doing in the broader community, not just in us. When we live authentically on the Sabbath, we recognize that keeping the Sabbath affects our life and every person we have contact with, as well as creation. As scholar Kent Blevins shared in his writing on the Sabbath, in ordinary times, the time when we punch into our workplace, we participate in the broader community.[1] However, when we keep the Sabbath, in holy time, set apart, the divisions of our labor, those things that separate us by class, disappear.[2] In other words, keeping the Sabbath benefits each of us as individuals, but that was never meant to be the end of it. God cares about the community. He cares about unifying us to one another, and himself. Therefore, the benefits that Sabbath rest provides are universal, even for those who rarely experience it for themselves.
Think back to Exodus 20 when God gave the commandment of the Sabbath to the people of Israel. They had just come out of slavery. A day of rest was brand new to them! They were used to being seen as less than their slave masters. They were not given rest or seen as worthy of it. For God to command them to set aside a day to remove all of the walls that separate classes must have been shocking to them,
“ But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates” (Exodus 20:10, ESV).
Anyone who had power and owned slaves would feel less than excited about this news. The Sabbath has been thought of in the past as a religious directive for the newly freed people, but if we take time to read into the context of this passage, We discover that it has political and social implications as well.[3]
As you may be well aware, most of us do not own slaves. But we do consume the services of those in the service industry. Think about the restaurant you eat at, those who work at the stores where you shop, and the delivery guy bringing you pizza on the weekend. These people are often paid less than the average blue-collar worker. What if we chose to not consume goods and services for twenty-four hours? We would be a part of giving them rest. Sure, they may still need to go to work, but if they did not have to service just one family, one person, that is more rest than they would have otherwise. Of course, this is a simplified version of how our keeping of the Sabbath affects those around us. But it is one example of how we can be intentional in imparting Sabbath rest to others. The reality is those people still have to go to work. Oftentimes, they will not get a day off for a while, leading to burnout, stress, and even hardship for lack of a fair wage. But that one day of rest that we choose, gives them a glimpse (no matter how small) of God’s invitation and gift of rest.
What the Sabbath is Not
I want to take some time to shift our focus. Because the Sabbath is fairly new to mainstream Christianity, I want to take some time to expose some of the misconceptions about the Sabbath. In my study of this topic, I have come across many misunderstandings which often led to overall misapplication. Yes, there is grace when learning how to apply the Sabbath to our lives. But I want to dispel some of the false truths concerning the Sabbath. I do not want you to miss the beauty that it offers so freely to those who take the intentional time to understand its meaning and rhythms. I hope that you will pursue the Sabbath with the grace that is available to you much more than avoid doing it the “wrong” way. The grace-filled way fills you with the delight of union with God. While the other leaves us wanting and filled with shame (we will cover more about this concept at a later date).
A Day Off
When the topic of the Sabbath comes up in conversation, what I get from most people in response to our need for the Sabbath is, “I need a day off!” After some time of study and life experience with the Sabbath, I am not surprised. Keeping the Sabbath is not a new concept, but has rarely been taught as a regular spiritual practice in Christian communities, or any communities for that matter. We live in a society that is driven by activity and entertainment. The idea of rest is a foreign concept to most people, Christian or not. Particularly within the Christian community, a day off is attractive. From personal experience, I am familiar with this concept. When your week is filled with more activity than you have margin for, a day off is very attractive! But the Sabbath is not a day off. It is not a day to take to avoid work or a time to do nothing (not to be confused for a slower pace). The more one leans into the rhythms of keeping the Sabbath, the more apparent it becomes that the Sabbath requires preparation to posture one’s heart for delight and rest. Just as one prepares for a celebration that they have been invited to, so also, the Sabbath requires that we slow down, delight, feast, and celebrate the gift that God has given to his people.
A Day to Catch Up
Similar to seeing the Sabbath as a day off, it is also not a day to catch up on all the things that did not get done during the week. This point comes back to having a margin. Margin is something that I have had to practice over the past few years. We often do not realize that we lack margin until we start to long for an escape from our day-to-day life. If you find yourself feeling like you just cannot wait until the workweek is over, most likely, you lack margin in your schedule. Margin is simply breathing room in your schedule. Elsie Callender expresses the importance of margin so beautifully when she describes it as being a time that is available to use for refreshing.[4] Sabbath cannot be a day of rest and delight and a day to catch up on errands, jobs around the house, or work. It simply could not work. The essence of the Sabbath is that it invites us to slow down for a day, which then transforms the rest of our week.
A Day to Waste
One lesson I have learned from keeping the Sabbath is that wasting it only leaves us unfulfilled. We all have days, weeks, or whole seasons where it seems that we cannot catch our breath. We have moments where rest can feel elusive. The problem with this thought process is that it leads us to believe that when the Sabbath comes, we can use it how we want. The temptation is to take a day to numb our minds to escape our lives. This is not the definition of rest. This is not the Sabbath. Keeping the Sabbath should result in restoration. Not to be confused with entertainment or something that keeps us busy until the twenty-four hours is finished. Wasting the Sabbath is equivalent to wasting a gift that was so freely and lovingly given.
What the Sabbath Is
Now that we have laid the foundation for what is often mistaken as the Sabbath, let’s turn our attention to what the Sabbath is. We have already witnessed in Scripture that Jesus refers to himself as “lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:8, Mark 2:28, and Luke 6:5). This offers us the insight that we need to lean into the Sabbath. Leaning into the Sabbath is similar to what happens when a young child feels weary. They lean in for comfort, security, and rest. They are aware that the one holding them is bigger than anything else at that moment. They are unafraid of the what-ifs. There is no doubt that the arms of this person can contain them for as long as they need it. This is what the lord of the Sabbath offers us. Safety. Rest. Peace. Anything that needs to be restored or refreshed in us.
Experiential
What I enjoy most about the Sabbath is that it is a moment in time that must be experienced to live in its reality. To talk about the Sabbath is one thing. To experience the Sabbath is something completely different. I thought I knew the Sabbath based on my understanding of it in Scripture. Yet, it was not until I leaned into the arms of the lord of the Sabbath that I experienced it. Only then did the life transformation that I needed begin to take place. What felt so foreign and difficult became something that I looked forward to. What began as task oriented-preparation, became worship. Sabbath is not a thing to be talked about and added to our lives. It is an invitation and gift from our Creator to restore us to his original design, piece by piece, moment by moment.
An Invitation
When we begin to truly experience the Sabbath, we begin to sense the invitation that it is. Our eyes are opened to what awaits us in the rest. In a later post, I will go over some of the elements of developing a Sabbath plan. But I want to draw your attention to what already calls to your spirit. It is the rest that the Father has had waiting for you all along. Rest is not supposed to feel like a punishment for our work, nor is it supposed to feel like something we force ourselves to do until we find more activity to fill our time with. There is something so breathtaking about receiving an eternal invitation to union with the one who knitted us together in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13). What an undeniable gift.
A Gift
I had no idea of the gift that Sabbath was until I chose to partake. I had come to the place of surrender to the one who cared for the wholeness of my whole being. Sabbath became a refuge. A place where I embraced the gift that my Creator had waiting. The beauty of the Sabbath is that it is not a one-time gift, like those we receive. It continues to permeate your very being. When we accept it as the gift that it is, it becomes more than one day. It flows into how we organize our lives, how we think about our neighbors, and even how we spend our time. In its purest form, the Sabbath we experience here on earth is practice for eternity. The Sabbath prepares us for the future reality of eternal resting in our lord, Jesus Christ. It builds the desire in us for union with our loving God. The best part is, we do not have to wait for eternity to know how much we are loved and treasured by our God. The Sabbath is the glimpse of what is to come. As the writer of Ecclesiastes said so wonderfully,
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart…” (Eccl. 3:11, ESV).
We Have a Choice to Make
When it comes to choosing to keep the Sabbath, we indeed have to make a choice. Either we will rest, or we will hustle. As a dear friend Becky says, “Either we steward the time that God gives to us so generously, or we steal time.” What a sobering thought to think that the time that we attempt to use outside of the grace we have been given is “stealing.” When we reject the invitation and gift of the Sabbath, we resort to stealing time not gifted to us. Instead, we push past boundaries, ignore margin, and reject rest, simply to get ahead to nowhere. I implore you to choose wisely. Will it cost you? Always. But the cost is worth it. It will always be worth it to embrace union with the Creator and delight in His goodness and the life He has so richly blessed us with.
~Natasha
Notes:
[1] Kent Blevins, “Observing Sabbath,” Review and Expositor 113, no. 4 (2016): 481-482, https://doi.org/10.1177/0034637316670952.
[2] Ibid., 482.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Elsie Callender, “How to Create Margin in Your Life for a Simpler Schedule (2 Methods that Work),” Richly Rooted, January 6, 2014, https://richlyrooted.com/2014/01/create-margin-in-your-life-for-a-simpler-schedule.html.