At this point in my life—training for a marathon with teammates, working full time, adjusting to and enjoying a new husband, spending time with friends and family—the working week is full. At times, it’s unclear whether I’m getting the most out of my day or simply feeling drained by it.
Something like this may feel familiar to you. It raises an assortment of questions around the shape and rhythms of the Christian life: at what point in the day am I able to spend time in stillness, prayer, and Scripture with God? What does it mean to rest in the love and assurance of God? What does it mean to rest physically? If all these aspects of the working day are outworking a sense of vocation, how much is too much? What type of life is God calling me and my family into?
These questions can be difficult to work out, but they also offer an invitation—to turn our face towards the ways of God. We can see God’s rhythms of work and rest in Scripture, the person of Jesus Christ, and the practices of the Church. Unlike the blaring alarm clock, God’s invitation is gentle and firm: come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden, he says, and I will give you rest—true rest. And unlike a packed daily schedule, God offers rhythms and practices that put work and time in their rightful place. The practice of the Church that we’re most encouraged to live into—the one that reframes my full life and allows me to turn my work day and rest back to God—is Sabbath.
Sabbath is the practice of life and rest. It’s the invitation to set aside the pressing tasks of the week so that we might turn our face again to God’s ways and proclaim the truth that Jesus Christ’s redemptive work is finished. The Sabbath is about being satisfied in our labours and enjoying the fruits of our work. It’s about relationships, and serving your local church, and good food. It’s a practice that’s less about what not to do (although that’s present by default) and more about how to live in the fulness and joy of life in Christ.
Keeping the Sabbath is the fourth commandment, a distinctive practice God calls his people to. But where we divorce Sabbath from its context in creation and redemption, it becomes distorted. Either we reduce it to a technique for a “balanced” life or it becomes a burdensome adherance that we try to use to gain God’s approval. This was not God’s intent: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27). Sabbath is designed to protect a space for us to enjoy unencumbered friendship with God. Because of this, our practice of Sabbath needs to adapt and grow across the course of a changing life. To embrace the Sabbath wisely means taking account of our life circumstances and season so we can discern how to rest with God every seventh day. Parents can’t take a day off from their work of raising children, but families can learn to Sabbath according to the stages of children’s growth. Adults in their 20s typically have time and opportunity to learn and innovate with Sabbath rest: to learn how to Sabbath, and to learn what resting with God does to the rest of life, and so on.