The Sabbath 

The Sabbath is the antidote to the culture of busyness. It is God’s megaphone to stop. We will never stop on our own because our work is never done. We will never stop on our own because we will always be looking for more stimulation. We will never stop alone because there will always be more demands than we can satisfy from others and our own drivenness. We will never stop alone because there is too much stimulation from extraneous sources of personal devices, streaming services and social media.

Only the force of a commandment has the power to make us stop. Exodus 20: 9-11 (NIV), God says: “Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord, your God. On it, you shall not do any work... For in six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

Whether this is a whole day or part of a day, the principle of taking a time of rest is to allow us to worship God and not our achievements or our drivenness. It helps us to relish what God has wrought through us and what he is calling us to see and do in this world. Our minds and actions are redirected as we allow our bodies to reposition themselves for service to his ends and purposes.

Ken Shigematsu in God in My Everything says: Sabbath offers us a “sanctuary in time.” In keeping Sabbath, we express our love for God by trusting that he will provide for us even while we are resting. Eugene Peterson points out that the Hebrew concept of a day actually begins with evening, not with morning as we are accustomed to thinking. This means that each day begins with the rhythm of evening sleep and rest before the daylight hours of work and activity. After we sleep, we awaken to find that God has been working while we have rested: making dew-covered spiderwebs, cherry blossoms, and puppies. We’d learn that because God doesn’t sleep, we can.”

By turning to God we find our true identity - that it is not in what we do or what others think of us, but the fact we are loved by God.