Stop and Stay Awhile
I’m not a theologian or a seminarian.
My circumstances have barred me from those professional titles, but everyone has the ability to ask questions about God, the world, and what they believe about it all. Theology, of course, is the study of God. Who says you have to go to seminary to do that? I hope not you. If so, you should probably stop reading now because you won’t like it here.
Disclaimers aside, today I want to talk about a somewhat familiar word: Sabbath. Last week, I wrote about night and why I love seasons with less daylight. I really enjoy when my circumstances force me to stop, slow down, and look at my life a little differently. Sabbath is engineered or intentional slowing down. As ever, a lot of my ideas surrounding Sabbath come from the BEMA podcast and The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. They also come from my own deductions and inferences from my private study of the Bible. Anything really granular and etymological in nature comes from Blue Letter Bible, a wonderful resource with Bible dictionaries, concordances, and all sorts of other things for those of us who like to take it too far. Alright, here we go.
In the second chapter of the Bible, before everything gets off track and goes awry, we’re introduced to the concept of Sabbath. After six days (whether or not you think this is literal is literally irrelevant to my point, so please don’t waste our time arguing about it), God looks at everything that he has made, pronounces it good, and takes a break. God, the maker of all that is and the sustainer of life itself, rests. In Genesis 2:2, we see the phrase “and he rested” (in the NIV, God bless it). The word “rested”, in the Hebrew, has some interesting roots and connotations. The whole phrase is the verb form of Sabbath, but this word “rested” has a couple elements: hana & samak. The first, Hana, connotes pitching a tent and dwelling there. So, like stopping and staying for a bit. Samak has this idea of sustenance, as if you were to lean on something and be supported by it.
I’m going to distill it for you this way: let your stopping and staying awhile be what supports and sustains you.
Do you think about resting as that which sustains you? I’m friends with a lot of young people and the young men have recently been into weightlifting, pre workout, bulking, and a bunch of other stuff that I don’t really understand. They’re smart and want to achieve their goals, so they have put a lot of thought and time into knowing how much they need to eat, what to eat, and when to eat it in order to maximize their strength training potential. I hear a lot of people online talk about this kind of thing as well, whether it’s in relation to weightlifting, losing weight, or even managing stress. There’s more and more talk about sleep cycles, but not nearly enough. I read and hear folks talking about figuring out your circadian rhythm, but it’s mostly with an attitude of irritation. It’s more about management than gratitude.
I had a friend once who told me that she has trouble getting enough sleep. I asked her about her schedule, habits, and bedtime routines. Then, she told me that she scrolls and scrolls through a social media app every night until she basically falls asleep. I asked her why she did that rather than just shutting her eyes and lying quietly until she fell asleep (a novel idea). Then she told me one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever heard, “I don’t want to waste any time”.
Waste? As in, put it to no good use? Do nothing of real, significant value? Y’all. Do you seriously think that scrolling through social media into the wee hours of the morning, turning your brain into mush, getting addicted to your phone, and robbing yourself of the sleep that you NEED is a good use of your time? I’ll stop before I run off with this potential digression, but you’ve really got to ask yourself: what do we really mean when we talk about laying down to rest as a waste of time?
If we follow my friend’s logic all the way to the bottom, we’ll discover that she viewed sleeping as a waste of her time, not, it’s important to note, mindlessly scrolling through social media. She’s not alone. So many people that I interact with on a daily basis find their need to take a break an annoying inconvenience. At best, they respect their body and reluctantly concede the need for rest. At worst, they manipulate theology and the Bible to justify their breakneck, one thousand mile an hour lifestyle. And that’s just the people that I know. Take a look at the world around us. Pay attention to how things are advertised and what sorts of information is trending. What does the news cover when it comes to lifestyle or making your experiences better?
Most of what we see encourages us to manipulate our body into getting the exact amount of sleep that we need, without sacrificing one minute of wakefulness. At best, we view sleep as an inconvenient necessity, rather than something to be thankful for.
What if we could be thankful for sleep? And not just sleep itself, but the need of it that forces us to stop and stay awhile, in one place, and accomplish nothing? What if we welcomed rest as that which sustained us? What if we didn’t just view food as fuel, but sleep as well? (Incidentally, I don’t like the ideas behind food being fuel either, but that’s another post for another day.) Have you ever considered that when you shirk your need for rest and/or sleep, you do something that not even God himself did? Do you think you’re stronger, smarter, or more capable than God?
In the book of Exodus, God tells the Israelite nation, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” (20:8). Remember. Do not forget. Do not forget your need to stop, slow down, and rest. And not just for fifteen minutes, for a whole day, each week, just as he has done. To keep something “holy” is to set it apart. So, you could explain the verse this way: don’t forget to set aside one day, every week, to stop, slow down, rest, and let that rest sustain you for the six days ahead.
Our propensity to forget is so strong that God literally commands us to rest. The passage I just referenced in Exodus is part of the Ten Commandments. People are still fighting to have them up in courthouses in the United States, so at least some of us see some value in them, but do we even know what they say? I’d be curious to know the percentage of people who would fight to have the Ten Commandments up in a courthouse, but who don’t take a day to Sabbath.
People who are smarter than me can explain the concept of Sabbath ad nauseam. There have been plenty of books written on the subject and I encourage you to read them. For our purposes, though, I’d like to give you a working definition based on what we’ve learned today. Sabbath is one day every week where we stop whatever kind of work we’re doing, thank God for all that he has given us, and trust him to continue to give us what we need. We stop and stay awhile, wherever God has placed us, and trust in him to sustain us through whatever comes next. This weekly reminder of God’s goodness, faithfulness, and ability to give us everything we need is what fuels our lives.
If my working definition is true, and I believe that it is, Sabbath is critical to our survival. Next week, we’re going to talk a little bit more about why we need a Sabbath, why I think it’s so critical to our survival. I promise that my answer will be more complex than, “because the Bible says so,” although that reasoning carries less weight than it should.
To wrap up this week, I want to give you a few guiding principles that have served me well and will, hopefully, get you started on your journey towards meaningful rest. The first is from my favorite author on this subject, John Mark Comer: “Start where you’re at, not where you should be”. Don’t decide that you have to start practicing Sabbath right now and go too hard. You’ll fail, just like that crash diet we tried six years ago and most of our new year’s resolutions. Don’t employ shame and negative self-talk. Start where you’re at and slowly add things on until you’ve got yourself a relaxing, God-honoring Sabbath practice. Second, ask yourself which activities are either relaxing or restorative. Sabbath isn’t about self-care as much as it’s about attention to who God is and what he’s already blessed you with. You might actually have to put in some “work” in order to rest, but it’s likely to be different from your day job. For example, I do a lot of mental and emotional labor for a living. Therefore, on the Sabbath, going for a walk or hike or crafting something is quite restorative for me. It might not be so for a baker or contractor, who work with their hands. Third, don’t overthink it. Maybe I’m just talking to myself, but I have a tendency to overthink all of my decisions and spiritual practices and rob myself of all the joy. The whole point is to relax and rest and bask in the glory of our very good God. Don’t make it complicated.
I can’t wait to dive more into this with y’all next week! Here’s to trusting God more and taking seriously his call to rest.