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Sabbath Keeping a decade later: Stopping

Lynne Baab • Friday April 29 2016

Sabbath Keeping a decade later: Stopping

A key to healthy Sabbaths comes from the root meaning of the word “Sabbath”: stop, pause, cease, desist, or rest. The heart of the Sabbath is stopping, not finding more things to do. Several people I know observe a Sabbath discipline of journaling, which has been a great gift to them. They record prayers and thoughts, and they try to use journaling as a way to listen to God. The center of this discipline is stopping long enough to listen and pray.

Patterns of Jewish Sabbath observance are very simple. The symbols of candles and braided bread on Friday evening are reminders of God as light and God’s presence braided into our lives. A glass of wine and a box of spices at the end of the Sabbath evoke the desire to bring the sweetness of the Sabbath into the rest of the week. Married couples are encouraged to make love on the Sabbath. Families often go for long walks. Many Jews, but not all, attend synagogue.

When we set high expectations that the Sabbath will be “spiritual,” it becomes one more thing to do, continuing the addiction to productivity that is so common in our culture. As a person who has kept the Sabbath for more than 35 years, first as a stay-at-home mom, later as a writer and editor, then as a pastor, and now as an academic, I can say that some Sabbath days are very spiritual, others are peaceful, while yet others are discouraging because stopping productivity reveals a deep fatigue.

Over time, though, the Sabbath inscribes important truths on our hearts. I wrote two weeks ago about the two versions of the Sabbath command which refer to God as Creator and Redeemer. Certainly, all Christians are invited to partner with God in the work of sustaining creation and bringing redemption. We spend six days a week taking seriously our partnership with God.

But the work is God’s. Redemption comes through Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is the source of power. We are God’s beloved children, utterly dependent on God, receiving everything good from the hand of God. Because we are so easily addicted to taking ourselves too seriously, because we so easily fall into patterns of idolatry that elevate our own significance too high, we need the Sabbath discipline of stopping productivity so we can remember that God is God and we are not. Stopping on the Sabbath is a gift of rhythm – like a heart beat – that keeps our hearts in the right place.

In the years since I wrote Sabbath Keeping, this truth seems to me to be the most significant aspect of the Sabbath. Yes, the Sabbath is a lovely gift that brings rest and refreshment. Yes, the Sabbath provides relaxed time with family members and friends. Yes, the Sabbath gives us space to clear our minds so we can enter our work week with freshness. But most importantly, keeping a Sabbath week after week and year after year inscribes on our hearts that we are finite creatures of a infinite God and that the universe, our work, our families, everything we feel responsible for, belong to God. God is God and we are not. We desperately need to know this truth deep inside our hearts, and the Sabbath helps to put it there.

(Next week, more on what I've learned in the years since I wrote Sabbath Keeping. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column. Watercolor by Dave Baab of me on my Sabbath. Most of this post is excerpted from “A Day off from God Stuff,” an article I wrote in 2007 for Leadership Journal.)

Resources I’ve written about the Sabbath

Articles:
A day without a “do” list
The gift of rest
Sabbath Keeping—it’s okay to start small
The gift of the Sabbath
Stopping: the gift of the Sabbath
Gifts of freedom: the Sabbath and fasting

Blog posts:
Of clouds and attentiveness
Grace gifts versus guilt-inducing obligations
Sabbath Keeping a decade later: What to do on the Sabbath
Sabbath Keeping a decade later: Gardening  

My Bible study guide, Sabbath: The Gift of Rest



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