Rest

But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work\– you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. Exodus 20:10

I’m tired. My legs, shoulders and back are tired. My mind’s tired. It’s been a full week and it’s not over yet. Still, I know what I’m going to do about it. I’m going to rest on Saturday. I’m going to play. If it stops raining, I’ll spend time in my gardens. I’ll do as much “nothing” as I can. I may read or play piano. I’ll laugh with Kay and have lap-time with the cats. I’ll sabbath.

What do you do when you’re weary? Even-breathing-is-an-effort drained? The biblical cure for this is sabbath – that thing God did on the seventh day of the first creation story, and later told us (over and over again) that we should do.

I admit that’s the reason I began sabbathing, but it’s been years since I was concerned with such rules. And I’ve never stressed over whether Sabbath is on Saturday or Sunday, or if it should start at sundown. In fact, I usually write sabbath instead of Sabbath, because for me it’s an everyday word, not a dress-up-for-Sunday-meeting one. Still, there’s wisdom in this old, old idea.

According to BibleGateway, sabbath appears 93 times in the Hebrew Bible and 57 in the New Testament. I believe it was an ancient culture’s God-inspired way to give people permission to care for themselves, their animals and their land. Like the blue laws of the last century, sabbath made it easier for people to stop their work, spend time with family, and rest. Employers would’ve known that they ignored this law at their own risk.

The time of enforced rest has passed, at least where I live. We might say nothing’s sacred (more on this another time.) Some people are working sixty or more hours a week but at what cost? The Protestant work ethic – suggesting that hard work and worthiness go together – is actually a distortion of that movement’s awareness that God’s grace is a gift given freely. 

Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ellen Goodman wrote that “Americans have notoriously fewer vacation days than workers in any other industrialized country.. … Even more remarkable than how few days we get is how few we take. … And in an Expedia poll, one out of five workers said they feel guilty taking vacations.”[i] 

Taking care of ourselves isn’t encouraged. In fact, people look at us funny when we say we’re taking a break. Use the word sabbath, and they might think you’ve joined a cult.

Yet, we need rest. We need time to step away and play, watch the grass grow, take a walk, exercise, or simply do nothing. Before agribusiness, farmers knew that the land needed fallow times as well. We all need sabbath, not because of a law, but because we’re better for it. You probably know this, but are you practicing it? 

If you need permission, I give you permission to stop. Rest. Play. Be. If not today, carve it into your schedule for another day. Make a weekly date with yourself – 2 hours when you do only what pleases you, 20 minutes each evening, or if you can swing it, 24 hours when you only listen to the spirit within you. Protect that time fiercely, letting nothing but blood or fire (as I used to tell my kids) interfere. Think of it as God’s gift to you. And revel in it. 

You’re worth it. 

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[i] Ellen Goodman, "America's Incredible Shrinking Vacation." Boston Globe, August 7, 2003. dev.autonomedia.org/node/2168