A Sabbath Reflection: It's All a Gift

A few months ago, I read An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor. Her concluding remarks on Sabbath rest are so beautiful that I wanted to share them here - to remind MYSELF, and all other hard-working independent women (and men) that it's all a gift  - so be thankful!

Here's what she writes:

When you live in God, your day begins when you open your eyes, though you have done nothing yourself to open them, and you take your first breath, though there is no reason why this life-giving breeze should be given to you and not to some other. In the dark or in the light... your day begins when you let God hold you because you do not have the slightest idea how to hold yourself - when you let God raise you up, when you consent to rest to show you get the point, since that is the last thing you would do if you were running the show yourself. When you live in God, your day begins when you lose yourself long enough for God to find you, and when God finds you, you lose yourself again in praise.

A Sabbath Vision

I have been reading Barbara Brown Taylor's book, An Altar in the World, and have found her chapters on "Vocation" and on "Sabbath" extremely interesting - probably because I have given a lot of thought to both over the years.

Living in Jerusalem made me very aware that observant Jews spend their Sabbath not cooking or lighting fire, not driving a car or even being driven in a vehicle, not pushing an elevator button or talking on the phone. Knowing this made me wonder how I, as a Christian, should be spending my day of rest, which happens to be Sunday?

Barbara Brown Taylor has also given a lot of thought to Sabbath rest. In her book, she writes:

... I think it is good to have a Sabbath vision... Here is mine...

At least one day in seven, pull off the road and park the car in the garage. Close the door to the toolshed and turn off the computer. Stay home not because you are sick but because you are well... Take a nap, a walk, an hour for lunch. Test the premise that you are worth more than what you can produce - that even if you spend one whole day being good for nothing you would still be precious in God's sight - and when you get anxious because you are convinced that this is not so, remember that your own conviction is not required. This is a commandment. Your worth  has already been established, even when you are not working...

It is hard to understand why so many people put "Thou shalt not do any work" in a different category from "Thou shalt not kill" or "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," especially since those teachings are all on the same list... No, I will not earn my way today. No, I will not make anyone else work either. No, I will not worry about my life, what I will eat or what I will drink, or about my body, what I will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Some Thoughts on "Sabbath"

Living in Jerusalem in my 20's made me more keenly aware of keeping the "Sabbath" day of rest than all my years growing up in Canada before "Sunday shopping" became the norm.

During my growing up years, few if any businesses, including restaurants, were open. In Jerusalem, things were taken a step farther: no buses ran on the Jewish Sabbath. No businesses in the Jewish part of town were open. If you drove your car there, you risked having stones thrown at you in protest. Resting on the Sabbath was taken very seriously.

Over the years, I have thought a lot about how I should be spending my weekly "seventh day of rest" mentioned in the 10 commandments. In my Sunday School years, we teenagers discussed the modern implications of trying to keep the Sabbath: Should we be going to the beach on Sunday? What about sports? 

"Keeping the Sabbath" isn't mentioned much in Christian circles anymore, but it is one of the spiritual practices mentioned in the book, An Altar in the World, which I read with great interest during Lent. Barbara Brown Taylor widens the discussion of Sabbath by reflecting on how, by not resting, we have changed our world. She reminds us that resting on the seventh not only refers to the seventh day - but also the whole seventh year - when the land was to lie fallow (with laborers taking a sabbatical rest as well)!

I found many of her observations very interesting. Here are a few:

There is no talking about the loss of the Sabbath... without also talking about the rise of consumerism...

Where there is money to be made, there is no rest for the land, nor for those who live on it...

In the eyes of the world, there is no payoff for sitting on the porch [and resting on the Sabbath]... Each year's harvest must be bigger than the last...

Sabbath is not only God's gift to those who have voices to say how tired they are; Sabbath is also God's gift to the tired fields... the tired land.