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When I originally wrote the sin of busyness series in June of 2012, Lori and I were not yet doing Sabbath – so it didn’t get mentioned. Now I see what an important part of the puzzle Sabbath is.
God created us. He knows how we function, and what hurts our bodies and minds. Six days of work followed by a day of rest is a healthy rhythm. Science has repeatedly shown that regular rest and time away from work make us physically and mentally healthier, results in longer lives, and make us more productive.
Lori and I have been doing a true day of rest on Wednesdays for just over a decade. Neither of us would go back to what we had before, and we’d make some pretty significant sacrifices to be able to have a day of rest.
A cycle of work and rest has so many benefits. It’s far easier to push hard when you know a real rest is coming. A day of rest also forces you to set reasonable goals. A day off recharges both the body and the mind. On Thursdays, I am physically and mentally ready to work. I find my creativity is much better, and I often have good ideas come into my head on my day off.
For us, a day of rest means no income producing work, other than checking comments. It also means no significant physical exertion. We don’t set an alarm that morning. We rest, eat foods we like, and engage in various forms of intimacy. Sometimes there is a time of prayer or working on dealing with injuries from our past. We may do some vision casting and planning.
I understand how impossible it sounds to do what we do. It took us years to go from seeing we needed to do it to actually doing it. My only regret is we didn’t do it decades earlier.
Society will tell you that you can’t afford a day of rest. Both science and the scriptures tell us we can’t afford not to. Choose wisely!
Resource: A Day of Rest: 12 Scientific Reasons It Works | Inc.
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Paul,
does it mean that you have two days free – Wednesdays and Sundays.?
@Martha – No. Sunday has never been a day of rest for us. We often have church duties, including me preaching for two services. We also do work on Sunday afternoon.
Oddly enough, this is another, if lesser, point of contention for us. Opinions on what a restful Shabbat looks like differ and mine differs from what is common around me. My wife and my brother both want a big Sunday dinner, even though that is the day we observe Shabbat. I feel that a simple meal, preferably prepared the day before, eaten on disposable plates makes for a more day all around. My wife, my brother, and most people I know feel that a big, freshly made Sunday dinner is a key part of the day.
Don’t get me wrong, that is how I grew up and I LOVED eating that big meal that mom or granny prepared. It’s just that as I grew older, I began seeing how much work and stress goes into preparing that meal followed by more work putting it all away and cleaning up. I eventually started helping out to ease the work load and found that even spread across more people it was an exhausting amount of work.
Somewhere in there was when the story of Martha and Mary became very real to me and I understood better than I had before. We get so caught up in the huge production that is Sunday dinner that we are too busy and exhausted to really rest and “sit at the feet of the Master,” so to speak. Often one or more of us would become short tempered and simply too tired to really fellowship with other believers or even our own family.
So I started questioning the habit/tradition we had of huge dinners on Sunday. Was it necessary? Was it wise? Was it really in keeping with the spirit of Shabbat? I gently pushed for more simple meals with easier cleanup. My mother and sister were on board with the idea but the others were not.
My brother never really helped much with the food prep or clean up so it never really registered just how much work goes into it. My wife is a closet workaholic (closet because she doesn’t even admit it to herself) and sees it as just a necessary part of the day. My suggested alternatives were met with zero enthusiasm by either of them and both mentioned that they would do their own meals rather than make the change. Others were less straightforward about it but were conspicuously unavailable for family meals of the more restful variety.
I get that the Shabbat was made for man and not man for the Shabbat. I don’t mean that we should do all of the meal prep on Saturday and cleanup on Monday or go hungry on Sunday. I just feel that we get so caught up in the huge and undeniably delicious meals that we end up exhausted instead of rested and snappy instead of Christlike. I’ve observed and seen it happen over and over.
Then again, the few times that we tried a more restful approach ended up with many being that way anyway because they were left with what they clearly felt was a substandard Sunday dinner. Instead of coming together as a family, almost went their own way, preferring big meals of fresh food over fellowship. My own wife was one of those latter.
Am I way off base? I’m truly not trying to be Pharisaical. My wife would usually laugh out loud at the thought of me being like the Pharisees. I just don’t see much rest in how we do our day of rest.
True, we abstain from work for pay, avoid hard labor, don’t play sports or swim lest we wear ourselves out or end up making more work for those who must staff the emergency room. Nor do we buy or sell on Sunday. Eating at a restaurant on Sunday is a huge taboo in our church because then we are putting someone else in the position of having to work on Sunday to staff the restaurant. My brother would actually be fine with that solution now and then but that would meet with even less enthusiasm than labor-lite meals. Actually, it would be widely condemned.
All of that to say, I agree that we cannot afford NOT to observe a day of rest, whatever that ends up looking like for us. It is commanded and for very good reasons. Thank you for expressing the truth once again.