By Caroline Stoltzfus
As my husband and I prepare to welcome our first kiddo next month, I wonder if I can keep one of the Ten Commandments in this new season. Is it the first, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3)? Not so much, as I’m well aware I break that one daily. How about the eighth, “You shall not steal”(Exodus 20:15)? No, I don’t see the lack of sleep bringing about a new money laundering habit.
The commandment that has me concerned is one I’ve cultivated over the past year for the first time. It’s the longest commandment by word and verse count, profoundly affects how we structure our time, work, and relationships, and provides a concrete way to reflect God's image, so it must be important. God speaks in Exodus 20:8-11, saying,
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, 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, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
Well, that sounds nice if you don’t live in America, where our rat race idols tend to get in the way of God’s good pattern for our lives.
For the more affluent, overextended careers, youth sports tournaments, brunch plans, Trader Joe’s runs, and landscaping all call to us on the weekends as we work to do more and be more for the sake of status. For those living paycheck to paycheck, if you have the day off, Sunday might be the one day to complete critical errands. Whatever your station, society demands that we not only treat the Sabbath as any other task-oriented day but that we require that others support our checklist—quite the opposite of what Commandment Eight instructs us.
What would it look like to radically reorder our individual, family, and corporate lives so that the Sabbath became the true blessing God intended it to be? How can we come to see observing the Sabbath as a choice to accept our limitations in order to honor our good God?
Overcoming Momentum
If you’re like me, you have a planner that you visit daily to keep track of your appointments and tasks. Perhaps you also have a family calendar, a grocery list on your fridge, shared virtual notes with your spouse, and an iPhone Reminders list just in case all of those other triggers fail you. We are constantly prompted to add to and check in with our checklist and are primed to do this from a young age.
My own teenage and college experience demonstrates this training. I wanted to be the best scholar-athlete in my class. My parents gave me every opportunity they could to pursue this goal, including post-practice training, driving me and my sisters around from the time they got off of work to 8:30 p.m., and spending weekends traveling for academic and sporting events. I liked the hustle because people liked me when I succeeded. And when I sat down to “rest,” it was more like crashing in front of a TV marathon.
This full plate didn’t leave any time for an intentional Sabbath, and that mindset carried well into adulthood. Track practice and homework became social overcommitment and freelancing on nights and weekends. I swapped my cable TV channel crashes for Netflix binging. Not keeping a Sabbath felt normal (no one else in my life practiced or even talked about the practice) and convinced me that if I could fit more tasks into my 168-hour week, I was limitless.
Choosing Delight Over Delusion
But believing you’re limitless is quite delusional and not the point of the Christian life. John Mark Comer shares in his lessons on The Sabbath Practice, “The Sabbath is a 24-hour time period set aside to stop, rest, delight, and worship. It is the best day of the week. In our era of chronic exhaustion, emotional unhealth, and spiritual stagnation, few things are more necessary than the recovery of this ancient practice.”
Do you feel that endless tiredness alongside a disconnection from your emotions and God the Father? Do you answer the question, “How are you?” with, “I’m so busy!” as if busy were an emotion? Do you put unrealistic expectations on your next long weekend in the mountains or yearly beach vacation? So many of us live in this state and keep hoping that if we work hard enough, we can magically create the time and money that will finally allow us to have a Sabbath.
This dream is a farce. Beyond our cognitive limitations and physical needs, we have spiritual needs that our own works cannot meet. Paul writes in Romans, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Scripture repeatedly reminds us of our limitations. God is not surprised that I haven’t found time to get a law degree, let alone that I cannot perfectly please him and earn salvation through my efforts.
If I cannot achieve salvation on my own or self-actualize in the approximately 4,000 weeks I have on this earth, why would I reject the beautiful weekly gift of Sabbath that God gives me complete permission to enjoy? Why wouldn’t I prune my calendar, knowing that he is already pleased with me in Christ, to protect the best day of the week? The more I lean into God’s kindness toward me and my limitations, the more I’m able to rest from the world’s expectations and give not just Sundays but all my days to trusting he loves me, not how many items I’ve crossed off my checklist.
My limitations allow me to better honor a sovereign God who deserves the worship of my time. Sabbath patterns set us apart from the world in a shocking way—start practicing it and see how your believing and unbelieving friends and family react! Through a day set aside to worship and witness, we reflect our creator’s image and give him the glory he is due. But how do we begin?
Discovering Sabbath
The Bible provides basic intentions for our Sabbath practice, and while theologians and secular authors differ on the impetus and goal of Sabbath practice, both recognize the benefits and provide insight into discovering this for ourselves. What that looks like practically in your life could take many shapes in many different seasons. I doubt my infant will respect the uninterrupted hours of sipping coffee, conversing, and reading outdoors that my husband and I enjoyed since we began our new Sunday rhythm about a year ago. Though, I believe we can always ask these questions to help us cultivate a day set aside to “stop, rest, delight, and worship.”
Does my Monday through Saturday calendar foster a full day of rest? What’s likely to overflow into my Sabbath?
Am I prioritizing too many relationships in a way that leaves my calendar too full and lacking intimacy? How can I prioritize the most important relationships on the Sabbath?
What expectations from the world am I placing on myself, even though they aren’t a value or interest to me? For example, having a weed-free garden or participating in club sports.
How can I allow others to rest on the Sabbath? Can I grocery shop on a different day of the week or make it a rule not to dine out on Sundays?
Where am I seeking rest in technology, TV, and social media? What would happen if I practiced a tech-free Sabbath?
I encourage you to find people in your community who already practice Sabbath and ask them how it’s changed their lives and their relationship with their true Savior. Invite your closest relationships into trying to practice Sabbath together. This discipline is meant to be done and better done with others. You might not enjoy it at first, but I bet you’ll soon find you can’t imagine life before honoring this good gift from our good God. One of my favorite thinkers, Andy Crouch, is known to say, “When you practice Sabbath, you always know you’re never more than six days away from a day of rest with a God who loves you and provides for you.”
Caroline and her husband Cole have been members at g+p since 2020. She enjoys deep chats, emerging ideas, trail runs, podcasts, and baked goods. Find her writing at homecomingcreative.com and on LinkedIn.