The Bible says that the Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest.
There are times I do not feel rested on Sunday that is for sure. Between trying to find something to wear and racing against the clock, it just feels like any other day where I have to get up, get ready and go to work…… expectations and obligation.
Church can be a sea of people I have to be polite to, wear the right outfit to appease their judgment. This can be exhausting. Volunteering on Sunday morning can become quite a job as well depending how involved you get. I have had friends who have quit attending church solely because every time they walk in the door someone is laying a guilt trip on them. “I want more!”
I have worked a better part of my life in a retail environment, I do not want church to just feel like more of the same, managing the demands of the public. I am exhausted at the end of my week and want a break.
I need to rest.
I need a place I can just be. I can skip make-up, wear yoga pants and Novafoam flip-flops. I can sleep as long as I want. I don’t have to be anywhere…….. or do anything.
In this space I don’t have to answer weird questions with carefully preplanned polite responses. I don’t have to push past that mid afternoon slump with productivity always in the back of my mind… I want a day that I don’t have to care about all of that………. that stuff that drills into my soul week after week in the regular world. Even if I had the best week ever, I still need a day to regroup so I can be fresh for the next week. The reality is God worked the need for rest into the design. People require about 8 hours of sleep every 24 hours and he also designed us to rest one day out of every seven.
So yes, on one day I will have a slow easy morning. I can take a stroll through my garden. I can drink up the fresh air, with my coffee in hand. My cat and dog dutifully in tow as I meander around my back yard. All the things that come to my mind are redirected into prayers. I pray about my week. I pray about my people….. and then those other people. I use this time to transform my worries and judgments into faith. I transform the failures into forgiveness, both mine and others. Today I choose to let all things become new.
Ahhh a guilty pleasure.
In the Bible God reminds us he wants us to do this once every week. Carving out one 24hr block of time to just chill, is his plan. It is not selfish nor is it lazy. He created us to work hard and then we get to take that well-earned brake.
If you have ever been involved in the fitness industry they say “Take a day off and let your body rest.” Rest heals you. Well it heals you body but it can also heal your mind, heart and spirit as well if you design your time to do that. People who are healed are stronger than those who are wounded and drained. That may seem obvious but the way the world works it can seem like everything is about money and productivity. We have lost this biblical truth.
Without rest eventually people can crack and then go into the opposite extreme. They can become guarded and selfish. Neither approach is God’s design. God’s design is work hard for 6 days. Enjoy your work. Take pleasure in your accomplishments. Help others meet their goals as others help you meet your goals. In other words, function as a team versus a group of people stepping on each other in order to further their own career. Then after a round of high fives……….. We get to take a day off to kick back and rest.
This is where we enjoy our “harvest” and be in a place where we enjoy sharing it with others. Can you enjoy sharing your harvest with others? Or do you feel constant anxiety because you don’t have enough to share, or they might exploit you again………… or the drive that greed brings: “If I work on Sunday I can earn time and half……….
Instead of worrying about what I could be getting done today I need to focus on the “Task at hand” which is not doing tasks………
Well for me that didn’t work out so well. My nature is to work-at-it. Sitting in the middle of the room bored did not end up terrible restful. I realized I needed to create a “sabbath-to-do-list”. My workaholic flesh started sneaking in chores.
The list is a “get-to-do” list. I can pick from it, or ignore it completely. It is just something to pull from when I get stuck and want ideas. The goal is not to just be lazy and selfish but to learn how to relax and refresh according to the way God designed it.
For example learn how to just be with people instead of trying to keep-everyone-moving-and-get-this-done. Another thing to watch out for is to do Sabbath in such a way that does not dump your responsibilities on to others. No one likes a fat lazy pig that smells bad, barking orders from the couch, because “THIS IS MY DAY OFF!” A Biblical Sabbath is not a ME day. It is a God day. It is a day to reconnect with God’s agenda by cleaning the gunk out of my heart and soul so I can decompress. It is also remembering to clean the gunk out that has come between me and my loved ones.
What is on this “list”?
- Shake off obligation: 1000 agendas many apose each other
- Shake off last weeks drama: Children, arguments, screw ups, The broken thing
- Shake off negativity: people trying to redirect you, or undermine you, suck you in
- Shake off the guilt: misunderstandings, mishandled situations, sins, forgotten tasks
Maybe I can’t solve these dilemmas today but I can go to God and ask for forgiveness or just for an emotional reset. Somethings don’t necessarily require FORGIVENESS but instead just the ability to reset and move on without it dragging me down in the back ground.
Pride and a self focus has become a thing in our culture but these are not a Christian values. As a Christian I can humble myself and make sure I am not making matters worse by being over-confident or turning into an authoritarian jerk. Or by taking care of myself I end up only taking care of myself (or my world) thus not extending myself to those outside my world who need a touch. Once a week I can look out there and see others and just say hi.
In a conflict I must remember I am not God……….. I do not see every angle. “Lord what did I miss yesterday?” Was this a “put your foot down” situation? Or was it a “listen, learn and be patient?” I am not saying doubt yourself. I am saying do not be arrogant. Be open to new information that may change the dynamics completely. The ability to realize you made a poor decision based on a half truth is a form of extending grace. Yes this can go both ways. You gave someone slack based on a pack of lies or you were unreasonably harsh not realizing extenuating circumstances. Grace and forgiveness as a lifestyle allows us to flex with what life throws at us. Sabbath gives us an opportunity to make sure we are doing this as a normal part of our life. We offer others a second chance just like we give ourselves a second chance.
You can pray:
- Lord, Did I make this worse? Did I handle it better this time? Thank you Jesus!
- Help me with my boundaries…… I want them reasonable, respectful and functional
- Lord forgive me……….
- Lord help me forgive them. I am really struggling with this.
- Lord, It was an amazing week! Thank you so much!
- Lord, Help so and so with their situation, is there anything you want me to do?
- Bless………… I love them. They are such an amazing person and important to me.
- Bless……….I can’t stand them. Lord bless them so they are no longer annoying.
- I forgive myself for doing………………..
- Lord I am worried about…………….. fill me with your faith, peace and wisdom.
Even if I am going through a rough time and this day started out in tears, my goal is that it is going to end smiling. Today, this day I allow my soul to take a bath. The yuk washes off. Yeah maybe I will need to make different decisions than I did last week (or maybe not). Sometimes you can do everything right and it still doesn’t go according to plan. The bottom line is I am allowed a reset in the Kingdom of God.
Even when “the plan” was pulled off perfectly. I feel I had the most amazing week but I still need a rest. It was good but exhausting! Work is work. Rest is rest. God rested after creation and he said “It is good!” Why not follow his lead? Sometime it is just nice to sit back and enjoy all that got done during the week and thank God for it. Relish the good moments. Reflect and relive the great things that happened last week. It is ok to do a wonder-of-God-review.
Now:
- Go to church
- Go to the park or the beach or the mountains
- have a picnic lunch
- Go on an easy hike or just go on a walk
- Play in the snow
- Go to the fair or a concert or a ball game
- watch a movie with people
- Take a nap
- Reconnect with your spouse or kids
- Go out to coffee with an old friend
- Go for a drive, explore a place you have never been with someone
- Read a novel
- have breakfast in bed
- Take a tour in your own city (normally reserved for tourists)
- play games (real ones not necessarily online)
- just get out of the house
- just whole up in the house
- walk your dog/s
- visit your parents or another eldery person you know, or a home.
- visit a local museum
- go for a bike ride
- Share good memories with each other by candlelight
- Drive on a memory tour (visit previous homes, grade school etc) tell your story
- take a single mom’s kid with you (give her a break and your kid a buddy)
- Find someone new to the area and show them around, hang with them for the day
- call someone on the phone
- write a letter or an email just to say “hi”
- take a boat ride like a Ferry, rent a canoe, a sailboat or a paddle boat
- check out the new housing development
- Go swimming at a lake or find a pool
- Stay the night at a local hotel just for one night. Make it a personal retreat
- do a puzzle or a color in a coloring book.
- Spend a day just taking pictures
- visit a small town go through antique stores and gift shops
Why is there this perception out there that God wants to grind us into the ground with expectations? Is it God that does this, or people? Think about it. For the most part our perception of religion is filtered through people. The point to being able to read the Bible is to give us the ability to screen what others teach us.
Go to church.
Listen to what was preached and then look it up for yourself. In other words take ownership of what you learn about the Almighty. If something does not sit right with me I look it up. Maybe what is said is 100% right on but the tone left me feeling condemned instead of loved by God. Or the voices in my head twist what is being said into a negative. God is love. This is our litmus test. If I do not grasp that I am misunderstanding something.
Love is not the same as being passive. Tough love is not an excuse to be heartless and mean. Love is wanting the best for someone. It means creating a bed time for the toddler because the toddler needs to sleep the same every night in order to be a happy functioning being the next morning. I think every parent has allowed the toddler to stay up late in the name of love only to pay the entire next day. True love protects the toddler from becoming a tired whiny miserable wretch the next morning, ruining his day as well as everyone else. Sometimes we do things fully believing it was the loving thing to do only finding out later it was the worse thing in the world. Sometimes setting boundaries now, difficult as it may seem, will create peace in the long run. There are other times when setting a boundary was misguided and creates an irreparable breach. Life is about learning from our mistakes, forgiving ourselves and others. letting it go and then trying a different approach next time. Love is both tenderness and having reasonable standards.
So the next question I had when I was trying to figure this out was “When is the Sabbath? Is it Saturday or Sunday?” As Christians we are not under the law but instead principal. The principal is: rest for a day and dedicate it to God. Technically a day is 24hrs. In the end I decided as Christians we decide what makes the most sense to you individually. A Jewish Sabbath is a specific law. A Christian Sabbath is following a basic principal that is pays respect to the conscience of a person. As you will see even in Jewish tradition “The LAW” has variety in its application.
The Jewish Sabbath starts on Friday night at 5pm. That makes it end at 5pm on Saturday. However Jewish people can be all over the map on how this works out. The Bible says sundown to sundown. Sundown in Jerusalem is at about 5pm. Some Jews start Sabbath at Sundown literally. Some use a clock and pick 5pm versus 5:14 one week and then 5:02 another. Some go by the Jerusalem time zone no matter where they live in the world. Others just assume it means when the sun goes down outside……. on Sabbath……. you relax. When it goes down again…………. the rest is over. This can get a bit wierd if you live in an extremely northern climate. I actually do not think God is concerned over the specifics of how a person sorts this our for themselves. I think he created us to need rest and a rule whatever it is holds us to a commitment. Here the commitment is to rest.
Laws create honesty and hold us accountable if they are managed correctly. So picking a start time and counting out to an end time holds us accountable to fulfill this plan. We do not do this to create a Sabbath prison but instead it releases us from all those other expectations that surround us in life. The endless obligations of life leave us feeling guilty if we dare to sit for down even one second.
If we create a boundary around our Sabbath we free ourselves from the creeping guilt trip the enemy can use to undermine its success. We decide what time this is going to start and clear up confusion as to when it is over. These guidelines protect ourselves from feeling guilty. “Is Sabbath over or not?” I share this because when I was growing up I would get confused over when the rest thing was over. I thought a day started when I woke up in the morning. Well if I woke up in the middle of the night I would wonder…… if I was still on Sabbath or not? The answer I came up with was A day is 24hrs pick what time you are going to start….. that decides when you stop, super easy.
As I said earlier in the nation of Israel, during ancient times, the law was sundown to sundown. We don’t live in Israel. I am not of Jewish decent (maybe you are). I am not obligated to their laws. I am obligated to the laws of the land I live in. I am held captive by my conscience. I have to live with my conscience not yours. You have to live with your conscience not mine. The world I live in considers Sunday the 7th day even if it is technically the first day of the week on the calendar. Which is it Saturday or Sunday? What if a person was raised Muslim? They spent their entire life thinking of Friday as the Holy day. Should they be required to change this if they convert to Christianity? Does it really matter when you start counting to seven? What matters is if it makes sense to you and you have a clean conscience. I think it is ok to make sense with the culture you live in as well. For example a Muslim convert living in a Muslim country may decide to stick with the Friday model versus converting to a Western Christian model or not. Whatever they want.
Any rule we place around a principle is to protect that principle. Jesus teaches us it is the PRINCIPAL that matters not the law. This means that when we obey laws (any law of the land) we are to aim at the principal it was designed to protect. As a Christian I am to follow God. In the beginning he set apart the 7th day making it Holy. How a person fulfills this in a practical sense will be a mix of personal conviction, family structure, culture and a seeming natural assumption.
With that said it is easy to get bogged down creating and recreating endless rules. Over time the Jews created endless rules trying to clarify endless questions of what we can do or not do on Sabbath. They are still arguing about it to this day. People are just that way, and we will do this. So catch yourself if you start doing this. Also see it in others who are trying to pressure you into holding their personal standards. We need to work with those around us so respect their insight but at the end of the day it is between you and God and your personal convictions. Find a balance and settle into it. When we allow ourselves to get caught up in the endless arguements over the sublties of rules we lose sight of the point. “Take a day off and just rest.” Jesus wanted us to focus on the point of a day off, to rest not the rules we create to protect our rest. Keep it simple and functional.
Another tradition that the Jews have around Sabbath is that they clean house all day long on Friday in order to prepare for Sabbath. Food is made in advance so you don’t even need to cook. This means when you finally do kick back….. the work is done, all of it. If you can do this, it really helps protect the day to remain restful. It is much more relaxing to me to see a beautifully mowed lawn than one that is fuzzy with dandelions going to seed.
The day of rest is designed to follow six days of work. It can also mean only schedule 6 days worth of work. Do not schedule 18 days worth of work to do in six days. Otherwise you may feel pressured into squeezing into that rest period. In our world it is usually five days with an employer and one day around the house. It may mean making some adjustments in order to fit the work load into the 6 day window.
God is about relationships so taking a day of rest is not about being selfish. An exhausted person is exhausting to be around. They are grumpy. They are sloppy. They snap at you. A person who gets their eight hours of sleep is refreshed and much happier. A person who takes their day off and actually rests and allows themselves to reenergize increases that sense of refreshment. A day of rest helps you maintain your composure. A day of rest and 7 nights of rest makes us a joy to be around.
Protect your rest not just for yourself but as a gift to those you love. One part of rest is letting go of anxieties by allowing forgiveness to wash away that ax that keeps grinding in the back ground. It is either pointed at you or you are pointing it at others because of their misdeeds. Once your mind has been freed from needing to “set things right” you can calm down and start to experience rest. This means you actually need to make things right with others whenever possible. As AA says “make amends”.
For some it will be as simple as just realizing you are still hanging on to something annoying from a long time and you just need to let it go….. move on already! For others it will be a battle. The hurts are deep or the habit of resentment is so ingrained the heart can’t just let it go. You would assume that if someone has a difficult time forgiving it is because the injustice was so great, and this can be true but it is also not always the case. The big offenses in life tend to be criminal behavior. There is a reason these misdeeds are illegal because the damage is so horrific. A Christian who has faced this has also spend alot of time trying to process throught it and will continue to do so.
However there is another hook the enemy can use to get us to hold a grudge. Hate, anger and resentment can make us feel strong. People do not want to let go of their negative feeling because it feels as if it protects us from further damage. “If I stay mad I will not fall victim to this injustice again!” It is a trick of the enemy to keep a person weak. Hurt is a wound. Wounds hurt when they are still wounds. We are WEAK when we stay wounded. If someone is yelping in pain constantly they are not strong. Anger is a cover designed to protect you from showing weakness. It is not actually HEALING from the weakness. A person with a broken leg is not strong. A person who went to a doctor had the leg reset and wore their cast ends up being healed. The heart works the same way. Pursue healing instead of holding on to hate. Hanging on to hate, resentment and the like is like allowing an infection to rage in your wound. Allow the “doctor” to wash that emotional pus out so it can heal.
It is wisdom and healthy boundaries that actually protect us. Healthy people have the freedom to care again. Unhealthy people are screaming in pain and lash out constantly. Maybe it was naivety that allowed you to get hurt? Maybe it was being sloppy or desperate? Heal the wounds and find the real facts and create reasonable boundaries based on the truth not angry perceptions. “Fort Knox” may work at first but eventually you must regroup and create reasonable boundaries. As the hurts heal the guard will be able to drop little by little. Eventually you will be normal again or at lease close to it.
For me I had a conflict over rest and going to church. As I said before working retail church just seemed like more of the same. It was not restful at all. This is not the same for everyone. For example if a person is a stay at home mom a day with adults is a covented break from children all week. You send your kids off to Sunday School and get to “Adult” for a bit.
Or maybe a person is stuck in a lonely office all week. Church is a time to be social and connect with people. Whereas I am burned out on superficial polite interaction an office worker by live for it. An office worker will turn off Cell phones and avoid the computer.
Every person has to juggle their schedules in such a way that they can get their rest, spend time with God and connect with other believers. Yes it can be really difficult but standing that ground can be a spiritual payoff of righteousness. For me I turn my face to the wind and just make it work. I can tweak my Sunday schedule periodlically in order to keep it fresh. I went to a Saturday night service for a season. I go to the last service on Sunday or make my Sabbath start at odd times. I wear causul clothes to church if I am not up to doing the whole thing. I can even watch it on TV if I just plain exhausted. No real rules other that rest and time with my Savior. Maybe Saturday is Sabbath and sunday is chore day starting with an early service. (ends your time with God instead of begin it.)
Time with God is reflection, Prayer, reading scripture and meditating how the principles contained in the bible fit into your life. Ideally a believer should be connecting with God daily I get that. But starting with one day sets the tone for other days.
Maybe even just putting a bible verse app in your phone so a scripture shows up in your notifications to remind you of your plan for the week is something. Listening to worship music on your way to work in the car can help.
Being a Christian is a lifestyle. Many are very diligent with the sincerity of this and others do not even know it is more that a weekly service. They just completely forget their Christianity until Sunday rolls around and can’t figure out why God is so distant. For alot of us we want to be diligent but it is hard to balance all the stuff of life. We want to please EVERY standard of “good” that is out their. You can’t do that. You have to choose your god, serve him, and let the other gods go……….. kicking and screaming. Making Sunday about Jesus and learing his agenda fleshes out your game plan for the week.
We are all at different places in our walk with God and we only need to look at the next step and take that step. Spending a day with God helps us keep taking those simple but important next steps.
Theophilia 