sabbath rest

I didn’t grow up practicing the Sabbath; in fact, for most of my life I would have believed that resting one day a week sounded remarkably like law-adhering, which we should have abandoned after Jesus fulfilled everything in the Old Testament. But now I’m a stay at home mom of two, and life, while rich and full and beautiful, has gotten harder. I’m not saying I didn’t need to rest earlier in my marriage or youth, but I wasn’t aware of that need. I’m aware now.

For the past several years, Timothy and I have worked on crafting our week, culminating in a day of rest. We’ve found that the Jewish way works best for our family: we begin Friday evening with a Shabbat meal (usually salmon, because it’s fast and fancy, with real napkins and a good candle which costs more than I knew candles could cost). Saturday morning, we may hike, wander our local flower gardens, visit our favorite Parisian bakery for the best croissants and pastries I’ve ever had, or work in the yard. I don’t mind the last option. It’s a different task than what I do for the other six days of the week, and getting my hands dirty is a special kind of therapy. Pulling up weeds helps me root out the thoughts I have I need to take captive,[1] and then I can see more of the grass I hope will grow to make a soft place for bare feet to run and play.

We end the day at church; our community offers a Saturday night service that caps our Sabbath really well. Our weekends aren’t perfect, and I often get to Sunday thinking that I never really refreshed when I was supposed to. But I’m learning a few things, and I know the longer my family works to build a biblical rhythm in our life, the more I’ll continue to learn. God is infinite. We don’t run out of things to practice, remember, absorb.

A great misconception I’ve had, since beginning to implement a Sabbath, is that work brings rest and peace. I thought that was biblical: God worked six days, rested the seventh. He rested because he worked; that much is true. However, I don’t think it’s right or helpful for me to see rest as a product of work. Here’s what I mean: if, by some gracious miracle, I’m able to complete my weekly checklist, tidy the house, love my children so well I don’t end the day with regrets, and throw together a healthy meal for my family, I feel like I’ve earned my rest. I feel relaxed. I did it! There is, for me, a certain kind of calm that comes over me when the house is picked up, or even quiet; if the kids are both playing silently in their rooms while I read a little on the back deck in the sunlight.

That isn’t Sabbath rest.

Sabbath rest isn’t my reward for accomplishing my goals. It’s not a feeling I get when I’ve done my job. I do believe we are meant to work hard for six days in a row, then cease for a single day. But not because all the work was accomplished.

God could do that. He could work for six days, get it all done, and rest. But I think holding ourselves to that same standard is unhelpful. We can’t get the work done. There’s a difference between working diligently and cheerfully and enslaving ourselves to work or its results: cleanliness, tidiness, quiet. If we run into Friday night and I keep rubbing kinetic sand off my heels (how is it everywhere all the time?), and all the books I put neatly on the shelf have been dragged all over the living room again, and the dishes were never done, that doesn’t mean I failed. That doesn’t mean I don’t get to rest.

No. My rest isn’t based on my work; it’s based on Christ’s. I can rest on the Sabbath, not because I completed my work, but because he completed his. It is finished. Sin and death are overcome.[2] When I cease working, it’s not because I deserve a break. I don’t. It’s because God, in his mercy and kindness, knows what we need. We need rhythms. We need reminders. We observe the sacraments as a way to experience, through our senses, the gospel. We taste, touch, see, feel, smell, hear.

The Sabbath, to me, is something similar. A reminder that I live, that I practice, that roots me in something greater than myself: I can’t work for my salvation, and I can’t earn my peace. My debt is paid, my life is not my own, and when I stop working—even if I still have work to do—my mind can focus instead on what God has done, what he is doing, and what he has promised me.

I can’t say that observing the Sabbath has brought more rest and relaxation into my life. It hasn’t. But it has forced me to slow down. To remember. To sit in the dirt and yank up what’s taking over my front yard, like I need to pause, pay attention to what’s creeping in my own heart, and dislodge it. Let it die. Or to spend time with my children, playfully, knowing that this time, unhindered by chores and work and important tasks, is a gift.

Completing our work doesn’t bring rest. But ceasing, no matter what we’ve left undone or what we were able to do, does, if we take that time, not to be lazy and leisurely, but to live out what God has granted us in Jesus: the promised rest.[3]

[1] 2 Cor 10:5

[2] 1 Cor 15:54-57

[3] Heb 4:9-11

Previous
Previous

the daily list

Next
Next

an overflowing bathtub