The Art of Resting: How to Sabbath Well | Part One

It’s a commonplace of contemporary life that we’re struggling to rest. Whether you’re a student, a worker, or a parent of small children, resting well is a challenge. We live busy lives and there is so much to do. Anxious, we fiddle with our work/life balance, we try to schedule “me time”, but it’s all, well, a bit hard.

In this context, it might seem counter-intuitive to talk about the Sabbath. Given how white-knuckled time management has become for many of us, how is a regular rule of rest going to help? The Sabbath is, however, what we need. In order to live well—in order to flourish together—we need to develop a thick, lived understanding of this ancient, delight-filled practice.

Here at Venn, Sabbath-keeping is something we’ve been leaning into, most recently in our new book How to Sabbath Well: Learning God’s Rhythms of Rest. In this first episode of a two-part series, John Dennison and Venn Presents host Sam Bloore talk about our need for rest and the rich and transformative practice of the Sabbath. They explore this profound theme of Scripture, and how the Sabbath calls us to live in light of God’s creative and redemptive purposes. If you’ve toyed with the idea of Sabbath rest, but have never really understood what it is or how to do it, this conversation is for you. Sabbath is a practice of freedom for life with God.