Lynne Baab

Sabbath Keeping a decade later: What I do on the Sabbath

Lynne Baab • Thursday May 12 2016

The question about the Sabbath I get asked most often is what I do.

I’ll back up a bit and say that my book Sabbath Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest came out in 2005, and immediately began to sell well. In its first year, it sold more copies than all but one of my other books have sold in their lifetimes. Because of the strong sales, I got asked to write articles, I was interviewed by magazines, and I have gotten lots of emails from people I don’t know.

In the book, I described my Sabbath pattern in the decades since my husband and I lived in Israel and experienced a Jewish Sabbath first hand. Here’s a summary of several decades of Sabbath observance. This is my last post in a series of reflections on what I've learned about the Sabbath in the decade since Sabbath Keeping came out.

When we returned from Israel, we decided to have a Sunday Sabbath. In the first decade back in Seattle after our time in Israel, I had young children and I was studying part time toward my masters degree. On the Sabbath, I didn’t study or do housework, gardening or home repairs. I tried to enjoy my children and my husband. Despite the Old Testament prohibition of cooking on the Sabbath, I did cook sometimes because we loved to have people over on our relaxed quiet day.

After ten years of Sabbath observance, I finished seminary and got two part time writing/editing jobs. I continued my previous Sabbath pattern but added one more discipline: I didn’t walk into my home office. Seven years later, I was ordained as a Presbyterian minister and I got my first book contract. At that point, our Sabbath shifted. Our kids were older and often had their own plans for Sunday, and Sunday mornings were now hard work for me. So our Sabbath became Sunday about 2 pm until Monday at 2 pm. Dave wasn’t working Mondays, so that worked well. I mostly had down time on my own on Sunday ("down time" = reading), and he and I went on a long walk on Monday mornings and ate lunch out.

About three years later, our church added a Sunday evening service, so I shifted my Sabbath to Mondays all day. About this time, Dave started having to work Mondays, so we had separate Sabbaths. This was very hard on our marriage! Dave was able to join me in a Monday Sabbath after a few years of separate Sabbaths, for which I’m very grateful.

I have continued to have a Monday Sabbath through my PhD studies and 9 years of teaching. But I have to say, now that I’m older and my energy level is less, my Sabbath usually starts on Sunday afternoon and goes until Monday evening, so it’s more than 24 hours long.

Why Monday? I guest preach about once a month, and that means those Sunday mornings are work. When I’m not preaching somewhere, we often have people over for Sunday lunch, which is wonderful but definitely has a work component to it. So I view Sunday morning worship as a pre-cursor to my Sabbath, a foundation for the day, but not really Sabbath time.

What do I do on this wonderful day? Sunday afternoons and evenings, and for much of Monday, I read. And read. And read. Novels mostly, the big weekend newspaper, magazines, online articles, poetry. I also usually spend some time on Sunday or Monday playing the piano.

First thing Monday morning I check my email, and I only answer essential messages. Then I let it go for the rest of the day. Mid-morning on Monday Dave and I pray at length, usually for about 45 minutes. We spend half of that time in prayers of thankfulness, and that long, leisurely time of thanking God for big things and small things is a foundation for my week. Dave and I eat dinner Sunday evening and lunch and dinner on Monday at home (often leftovers so I don’t have to cook), and we talk in a leisurely fashion over these meals. We have a printed list of prayers for grace for our Sabbath meals, and using a printed prayer rather than extemporaneous grace makes the day feel different and special.

Here are the things that I sometimes do on my Sabbath day:

• read Facebook (if I haven’t looked at it all week)
• go to the gym (if my schedule for the week has gotten too complicated to allow a gym trip on Tuesday)
• cook (if I want to)
• balance the checkbook (this is something I enjoy!)

I do all these things in a different spirit on the Sabbath than I do on the rest of the days. I do them slowly, without pressure.

I describe Sabbath time as “down, down, down,” and I can feel myself letting down and letting go of worries and responsibilities. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about what I consider to be the most profound lesson the Sabbath teaches us: that God will keep the universe going without me. That God is God and I am not. That I am not indispensible. Therefore I don’t feel a lot of pressure to make my Sabbath deeply “spiritual.” The prayer time with Dave is great, but other than that I simply read things I enjoy and I let God keep the universe running without my help.

I have been reluctant to write this post because I don’t want to communicate that I think my form of Sabbath observance is best. The key concept is stopping a lot of what we do on the six days, then choosing to add activities that provide rest and balance. That may look quite different for you than it does for me.

(Drawing by Dave Baab of me on my Sabbath day. This coming Sunday is Pentecost, and next week’s post will be reflections for Pentecost. The following Sunday is Trinity Sunday, and the post that week will focus on the Trinity. Three weeks from now I’ll begin a series on worshipping God as Creator, with ideas for encountering God in Creation. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “Subscribe” in the right hand column.)

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 
Sabbath Keeping a decade later: Stopping
Sabbath Keeping a decade later: Relationships

My Bible study guide, Sabbath: The Gift of Rest

Lynne M. Baab, Ph.D., is an author and adjunct professor. She has written numerous books, Bible study guides, and articles for magazines and journals. Lynne is passionate about prayer and other ways to draw near to God, and her writing conveys encouragement for readers to be their authentic selves before God. She encourages experimentation and lightness in Christians spiritual practices. Read more »

Lynne is pleased to announce the release of her two 2024 books, both of them illustrated with her talented husband Dave's watercolors. She is thrilled at how good the watercolors look in the printed books, and in the kindle versions, if read on a phone, the watercolors glow. Friendship, Listening and Empathy: A Prayer Guide guides the reader into new ways to pray about the topics in the title. Draw Near: A Lenten Devotional guides the reader to a psalm for each day of Lent and offers insightful reflection/discussion questions that can be used alone or in groups. 

Another recent book is Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian  Life, available in paperback, audiobook, and for kindle. Lynne's 2018 book is Nurturing Hope: Christian Pastoral Care for the Twenty-First Century, and her most popular book is Sabbath-Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest (now available as an audiobook as well as paperback and kindle). You can see her many other book titles here, along with her Bible study guides.

You can listen to Lynne talk about these topics: empathy, bringing spiritual practices to life. Sabbath keeping for recent grads., and Sabbath keeping for families and children.

Lynne was interviewed for the podcast "As the Crow Flies". The first episode focuses on why listening matters and the second one on listening skills. 

Here are two talks Lynne gave on listening (recorded in audio form on YouTube): Listening for Mission and Ministry and Why Listening Matters for Mission and Ministry.

"Lynne's writing is beautiful. Her tone has such a note of hope and excitement about growth. It is gentle and affirming."
— a reader

"Dear Dr. Baab, You changed my life. It is only through God’s gift of the sabbath that I feel in my heart and soul that God loves me apart from anything I do."
— a reader of Sabbath Keeping