Sabbath: A Sanctuary in Time
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Rule of Life M2 Sermon Notes February 14, 2010
Title: Sabbath: A Sanctuary in Time
Text: Exodus 20:8-11
Testimonies: 9:30 a.m. Karla Falk and Louise 11:30 (& Phil?) Reilly…
Props: pointer, Trellis, blackberry, bell
The season of Lent (the forty days before Easter) begins on Wednesday. Many followers of Christ voluntarily give up something during the season of Lent. Some people fast from meat, dessert, or movies or something that is significant to them. (Others give by devoting themselves to more passionate prayer or will donate more generously to the poor during Lent.) When you have fasted in some way you can truly feast and celebrate. Saying no for a while can enable you to say yes. So perhaps consider giving up something during Lent, so that you can celebrate Easter more fully.
For athletes to maximize their potential, they need to alternate between periods of active training and rest. This concept was advanced by Flavius Philostratus (A.D. 170-245) who wrote the training manuals for Greek athletes and was resurrected by Russian sports scientists who applied the concept in the 1960s and achieved stunning results with their Olympic athletes.
Today, elite athletes around the world recognize the need for work-rest ratios. They know that their body repairs and strengthens itself in the time between workouts, and continuous training for seven days a week without resting actually weakens them as athletes. This is why high performing Olympic athletes train typically train hard up to six days a week, but then have a day for rest and recovery.
Woven into the fabric of our beings is a need for regular rest and recovery. God calls us to honour our design by living in synch with our need for rhythmic rest.
We’re in a new series on what it means to live by a rule or life (show trellis), or a structure that supports the growth of our relationship with God, so that we embody more fully God presence in the world (if you missed the intro message last Sunday you can download an MP3 from our website and there are more handouts Rule of Life handouts in the back—if you weren’t here last Sunday). Sabbath-keeping is a foundational part of a rule of life for a follower of Christ.
Thomas Merton, the deeply perceptive writer on the spiritual life, has said the most pervasive form of violence in the modern world is busyness… not drugs, not guns, but busyness…1
The Chinese character for busy combines the pictographs for death and heart, suggesting that busyness kills the heart. (Show character).
Perhaps you agree that Sabbath is a good thing—even important. But when was the last time you stopped work and really unplugged from all your electronic gadgets for a day? We assent to the idea that Sabbath is a good thing, but we feel we won’t be able to get all we need to get done if we take time for a weekly-24 hour Sabbath.
But “Sabbath,” as Wayne Muller (hold and SHOW BOOK on powerpoint—confirm with Jo) wisely says, “is not dependent upon our readiness to stop. We do not stop when we are finished. We do not stop when we complete our phone calls, finish our project, get through this stack of messages, or get out this report that is due tomorrow. We stop because it is time to stop. Sabbath requires surrender. If we only stop when we are finished, we will never stop—because our work is never completely done.”2
Some us feel that if were independently wealthy or retired we would have the time to take for a Sabbath. David Steindl-Rast has wisely said that leisure is not the privilege of those who have time, but rather the virtue of those who give to each instant the time it deserves.3
In a monastery life is regulated by a bell (use bell). A monk or nun knows that time is not their own and when a bell rings, they must stop what they are doing and move on to what is being asked of them. Saint Benedict (who in effect coined the term rule of life in the sixth century) said, the monk must put down his pen without crossing his “t” or dotting his “I”. Monks recognize that there is a proper time and place do things: sleep, eat, pray, work, rest, and to play. Now I realize that we are not monks living in the cloister, but the beauty of living by a rule of life (a sacred rhythm) is that we have a bell that enables us to give each instance of life the time it deserves (not necessarily the time we feel like giving it). In the midst all of the time pressure in our lives, our we use a monastic bell to call us to stop for the Sabbath.
And God calls us to stop for the Sabbath, one day in seven (it may not be on Sunday as people such as doctors and firefighters may have to work on Sundays.).
In fact, God commands us to stop. Eugene Peterson rightly observes nothing less than the force of a commandment has the power to make us stop.4 In Exodus 20 vs. 8 God says: “Six days you shall labour and do all your work. The seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord, our 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 all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.” Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (BTW, the Sabbath day of rest, predates both Christianity and Judaism, it is something we can trace back to the very beginning of creation, and it’s the first thing in Scripture that God calls holy). Sabbath is not just good advice, but it is a practice that honours a need for rest that is woven into the very fabric of our being.
The Sabbath is a gift to us. The Rabbi’s called Sabbath God’s most precious gift to us.
I hope the Sabbath doesn’t feel like an “ought to,” but a gift you fall in love with.
The Sabbath provides us with what Rabbi Abraham Heschel has called a “Sanctuary in Time.”
In his book The Sabbath he writes, “The modern man does not know how to stand still, how to appreciate a moment, an event for its own sake.…
… Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space (physical architectural structures, transportation, mountains, rivers, the things we see and lay our hands on in our daily lives); on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon…to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world… The Sabbath itself is a sanctuary which we build, a sanctuary in time… The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals.”5
Providing Sabbath Space
Sometimes we cannot get away to new space for a vacation or even a retreat. We may not be able to experience Sabbath in a new space, but no matter where we are, by creating a sanctuary in time we enter into a safe, sacred place where we experience rest and joy in the presence of God.
If Sabbath is part of our rule of life, it will become our Sanctuary in Time where we become people who trust God. Have you ever felt, “I want to trust God more.”?
Sabbath is the perfect space for us to grow in our trust of God. The reason we don’t take Sabbath is because we feel with all we need to get done, there’s no way we can take a day off and hope to keep up.
If we set aside a day each week for God and the restoration of our soul, we are trusting that God will provide all that is truly needed.
We began our existence as human beings on the Sabbath. Theologian Karl Barth observed that while Sabbath occurred on the seventh day of creation, Sabbath was the first day for human beings. Eugene Peterson, in his book on the Psalms, Answering God, points out that the Hebrew concept of the day begins with evening, not with the morning and so we begin the day in rest. When we wake we find that God has been working…making cherry blossoms, maple leaves, and puppies… When we know that even before our day begins, God has been at work, we can rest. When we know that God doesn’t sleep—we can.”
In Psalm 127 we are reminded that God provides for us while we sleep. In Hebrew the best translation in the context of Psalm 127:2 is that God provides for us while we sleep. Solomon, who was the author (or at least the subject) of Psalm 127, received his greatest gift, his legendary wisdom, while he slept! When we understand that God provides for us in our sleep, we can sleep.
Sabbath gives us an opportunity to turn from our work and our productivity--things we are tempted to depend on--over to God and experience A Sanctuary in Time.
Sabbath is a Sanctuary in Time because it’s a Sanctuary from Work.
Sabbath for a Student
I’ve shared this story before, but it bears repeating: Marva Dawn, a woman who has preached here at Tenth and is the author of Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, learned how to trust God and rest during a period of time as a student in a demanding PhD program at Notre Dame. Her graduate degree required her to take French, German and Latin all at once.
(She says, “The only way for me to keep the three languages straight was to devise an arduous study schedule beginning each morning at six. I was not a morning person… I worked on Latin till Latin class at nine, after which I studied German till that class. Studying French and class took half the afternoon and then I would swim a while to stay in shape (and cool my brain!). Returning home, I continued working on French till dinner, and then studied German till I went to bed at eleven. Each night I dropped into bed utterly exhausted, but the intense pace was necessary since, after only six weeks of class, I had to be able to translate a thousand words in a two-hour test in each language…)
What enabled me to keep following this absurd schedule every day was my anticipation, celebration, and remembrance of the Sabbath. Toward the end of the week, the knowledge that Sabbath would soon come gave me incredibly powerful comfort and courage to persist, even as, at the beginning of the week, memories of the Sabbath delight I had just experienced motivated me to begin again. And on Sundays ceasing to work at languages set me free for lots of fun…
Every Sunday I enjoyed worship and Bible study, ate different foods than I ate during the rest of the week and engaged in relaxing and creative activities. Sometimes I played the organ for worship, went to the beach or swimming pool, took long walks, or played in the parks in the afternoon with friends or by myself. Most of all, Sunday was a day for enjoying God’s presence.”
Even now though things are not as intense, Marva says, each week she experiences a lovely moment of release when she goes to bed on Saturday nights. She says, “I sleep differently on Saturday nights because the Sabbath has begun.”
When I was in graduate school I had not read Marva’s book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, but I felt convicted to honor the Sabbath commandment by taking a 24-hour period away from study once a week. Because I from time to time would have exams on Monday morning, I decided I would take Sabbath from dinner time on Saturday to Sunday evening dinner. Sabbath enabled me to study more effectively the other six days and made school a more enjoyable experience.
Whether we are student, or working, at home, part of our Sabbath rule of life--will mean we do something different on our Sabbath than what we do the other six days of our week.
I have a professor friend whose work involves a lot of mental effort. He teaches, he researches, he writes. For him, on Sabbath (though he might not use the term) means go fish. It is very restorative for him. He tempted… Now if this person were a fisherman, fishing probably wouldn’t be restorative for him. So part of what Sabbath involves us doing something different from what we would normally do the other 5 or 6 days of the week.
What does Sabbath keeping look like for a mother with young children? Jennifer Tong raised that question on our Tenth blog.
(Karla Falk 9:30, Louise Reilly 11:30 a.m.)
Karla:
How do you keep the Sabbath as mom with young kids?
It's not much that we do to keep the Sabbath--there are a couple of key points from my perspective. The first is to limit the amount of housework (no laundry, no cleaning, no grocery shopping) and the second is to use the kids’ nap time for personal rest--either an actual nap for me or reading for pleasure. I like to cook, so I don't find it onerous to cook on the Sabbath but we do often order in on Sunday nights. Then there's less work for clean up after supper. The other item is that sometimes, depending on how our weeks have gone, Kevin will get up with the kids--I'm usually awake, but to not have to be the first response for diaper changes and breakfast is a welcome rest.
Other little pieces of Sabbath come on a weekly or yearly basis. Kevin and I hire a sitter once a week for a date night. We either take in a play at a local playhouse or go out for supper. For the next few weeks we’ll be taking some French tutoring together. We find this time of connection with each other essential in a busy week, especially when meal times are very child-centered and we have commitments in the evenings.
Another wonderful way to have a Sabbath on a yearly basis is the Mom’s Retreat that the Thursday morning mom’s group organizes. I’ve been leading the mom’s group for 2 years now and have attended 3 retreats. Even when I lead and have preparations in terms of worship, I find the weekend to be a wonderful break from the demands of my work of motherhood and household management. Our next retreat is coming up on the weekend of February 26-28 and we have spaces we need to fill, so I invite you to join us for a weekend of fellowship, worship, rest, and perhaps best of all, someone else cooking for us. Please talk to me after the service if you are interested—as I said, we need more people to sign up or else we’ll have to cancel this wonderful event.
Louise:
When did you first begin to intentionally observe Sabbath as a family?
It really began for us when my husband Phil started here at Tenth as Pastor of the Third Service. As some of you will know, Phil was also working a full-time job in business while pastoring the Third Service, the combination of which (though incredibly life-giving for him) was also quite all-consuming. We have two young children, at that time very small, and more and more we were realizing that a lack of boundaries on both of our parts was leading to us having less and less time together as a family. In addition to being a full-time Mum, I also work part-time from home – generally either very late at night or very early in the morning while my children are asleep - and so there was always the feeling that I was never quite away from my work, even at weekends. As we began to recognize this, we sought to change it … and without even really recognizing it, we began to observe Sabbath together.
So, how does Sabbath look for you as a family?
Well, given the nature of Phil’s work when we first began this journey, it made sense for us to set Saturday apart as our day of rest, and we have continued to do that even after Phil stepped down from his pastoral role here at Tenth. For me, the key difference on a Saturday is that I put the laptop away, and do not, under any circumstances, do my (paid) work! I am able to set both my work aside, and the worry about if and when it’s going to get done. This is very freeing, and allows me to be fully present to my family & to enjoy the time I have with them. Having children certainly redefines the meaning of “rest” though, and so while Saturdays may not involve as much pondering and reflection as Phil and I might like, there is a lot of focus on fun, and on simply being together. We often take day trips, or more often than not we wander around Granville Island together eating sausage rolls and watching street performers! We take the opportunity to connect with friends too, and enjoy the freedom of doing this without the pressures that week-days bring. We also try to avoid cooking wherever possible on a Saturday – just little things like this make the day more restful and refreshing.
How has this impacted your lives individually and as a family?
I know that for Phil and I, we now really understand Sabbath as a gift from God. For me, the dynamic of my part-time work is incredibly tiring, but I now have a day in my week where this is set aside and replaced with physical refreshment and rest. Our boys, though still very young, know that we will have a day together each week and they look forward to this. By intentionally taking Saturdays as Sabbath, we are accepting this amazing gift, and are already beginning to wonder how we survived without it!
A friend of mine grabs a little rest from parenting by finding another mother with kids who are close in age and get together—letting kids take care of themselves and experience a Sabbath from the routine.
Sabbath for almost all of us will mean—unplugging from this (show laptop or backberry).
It means we won’t be creating our to do list (unless it is to just dump something from our brain so that we can be free of it), we won’t do wedding planning, taxes.
What about shopping?
On my Sabbath day my wife, young son, and I may go to a store we can walk to not far from our home, pick up some food at the deli for dinner. A little shopping feels permissible, but if I say, “Well now that we are at the store, I might as well generate a list of all the things we need this week”... then shopping starts to feel like work for me and I feel like I am violating the Sabbath. We can sense intuitively when something crosses the line and becomes work.
But I would say in general, without being legalistic, we ought to do away with our stock up at Costco or getting all what we need at London Drugs shopping on our Sabbath and minimize our shopping in general and savour the gifts we cannot buy—the priceless gifts of God, his son Jesus, our friends, family, to rest and enjoy our bodies and use them in ways that bring joy.
Our Sabbath is meant to be a gift A Sanctuary in Time (not a Sanctuary in Costco).
As a new parent, I revised my rule of life. I thought more about how I could do my “ought to” shopping on days other than my Sabbath… It’s a good thing that many people have 2 days off each week. One can be a Sabbath and other can be a day for getting the things done we need to do: shopping, paying bills, laundry. (It takes some work to enter the Sabbath. Busyness can be a form of sloth because we neglected plan for rest. The book of Hebrews chapter 4:11 make every effort to enter into God’s Sabbath rest.).
Do What Brings Life
Some people grew up in strict homes where as children the Sabbath was a dreary day of don’ts: don’t play baseball, don’t play games, don’t chew gum. The only thing they were allowed to do on the Sabbath was stay in the house and read the Bible…
How do we honor the God’s intention for the Sabbath?
We honour God’s intention by choosing things that draws us to God and things that bring life.
The Rabbi said that Sabbath is God most precious gift. It’s a Sanctuary in Time.
Jesus in response to the teachers of law who so multiplied the rules and regulations around the Sabbath so that it was no longer a joy, but a burden, no longer a delight, but a duty, said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.”
Vancouver Island pastor Mark Buchanan says on the Sabbath, Embrace what gives life.
(I may use this)
“Sabbath… is a reprieve from doing what you ought to do, even though the list of oughts is infinitely long and never done. Oughts are tyrants, noisy and surly, chronically dissatisfied. Sabbath is the day you trade places with them: they go into the salt mine and you go out dancing. It is the one day when the only thing you must do is to not do the things you must.
What is life-giving for you? (a moment to reflect on that.)
Like for many of you, being outside is restorative for me. Walking, trailing running, hiking, or sailing are centering life-giving experiences for me.
Sabbath to a great day eat different foods, to take a nap, to spend time with people you love, to make love for married couples, and most important to celebrate and worship God and to give thanks for his gift of life. Sabbath is a day to delight in God, in people, in the gifts that God has given you. Sabbath is a day to connect with God, ourselves, with others and all that ennobles.
The fourth commandment says that the Sabbath day is to be a day where we stop and set apart a day for the Lord, it is to be kept holy (emphasis added). It means we are to set apart Sabbath for a sacred purpose.
We’re in a series on a rule of life. A rule of life isn’t just about adding things (use the sheet). It’s also about subtracting things. “Spirituality is not about addition, but about subtraction,” said Meister Eckhart.
Some of us need to create a ‘to do’ list, and some of us need to create or a ‘stop-doing’ list. A healthy spirituality includes pruning, cutting some good things so that what is most important and enduring flourishes. Sometimes we need to say no to say yes.
Everyone says, “I’m so busy.” But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, Our busyness is like the weather. Everyone complains about it, but no one does anything about it. We can do something about it by pruning and by committing to stopping on the Sabbath. Why not during Lent, for the next 40 days before Easter, commit to honour a 24-hour Sabbath?
Part of way we develop our rule of life will include pruning so that we can enjoy what the Rabbi’s called God’s most precious gift, Sabbath, our Sanctuary in Time.
Rule of Life M2 Sermon Notes February 14, 2010
Title: Sabbath: A Sanctuary in Time
Text: Exodus 20:8-11
Testimonies: 9:30 a.m. Karla Falk and Louise 11:30 (& Phil?) Reilly…
Props: pointer, Trellis, blackberry, bell
The season of Lent (the forty days before Easter) begins on Wednesday. Many followers of Christ voluntarily give up something during the season of Lent. Some people fast from meat, dessert, or movies or something that is significant to them. (Others give by devoting themselves to more passionate prayer or will donate more generously to the poor during Lent.) When you have fasted in some way you can truly feast and celebrate. Saying no for a while can enable you to say yes. So perhaps consider giving up something during Lent, so that you can celebrate Easter more fully.
For athletes to maximize their potential, they need to alternate between periods of active training and rest. This concept was advanced by Flavius Philostratus (A.D. 170-245) who wrote the training manuals for Greek athletes and was resurrected by Russian sports scientists who applied the concept in the 1960s and achieved stunning results with their Olympic athletes.
Today, elite athletes around the world recognize the need for work-rest ratios. They know that their body repairs and strengthens itself in the time between workouts, and continuous training for seven days a week without resting actually weakens them as athletes. This is why high performing Olympic athletes train typically train hard up to six days a week, but then have a day for rest and recovery.
Woven into the fabric of our beings is a need for regular rest and recovery. God calls us to honour our design by living in synch with our need for rhythmic rest.
We’re in a new series on what it means to live by a rule or life (show trellis), or a structure that supports the growth of our relationship with God, so that we embody more fully God presence in the world (if you missed the intro message last Sunday you can download an MP3 from our website and there are more handouts Rule of Life handouts in the back—if you weren’t here last Sunday). Sabbath-keeping is a foundational part of a rule of life for a follower of Christ.
Thomas Merton, the deeply perceptive writer on the spiritual life, has said the most pervasive form of violence in the modern world is busyness… not drugs, not guns, but busyness…1
The Chinese character for busy combines the pictographs for death and heart, suggesting that busyness kills the heart. (Show character).
Perhaps you agree that Sabbath is a good thing—even important. But when was the last time you stopped work and really unplugged from all your electronic gadgets for a day? We assent to the idea that Sabbath is a good thing, but we feel we won’t be able to get all we need to get done if we take time for a weekly-24 hour Sabbath.
But “Sabbath,” as Wayne Muller (hold and SHOW BOOK on powerpoint—confirm with Jo) wisely says, “is not dependent upon our readiness to stop. We do not stop when we are finished. We do not stop when we complete our phone calls, finish our project, get through this stack of messages, or get out this report that is due tomorrow. We stop because it is time to stop. Sabbath requires surrender. If we only stop when we are finished, we will never stop—because our work is never completely done.”2
Some us feel that if were independently wealthy or retired we would have the time to take for a Sabbath. David Steindl-Rast has wisely said that leisure is not the privilege of those who have time, but rather the virtue of those who give to each instant the time it deserves.3
In a monastery life is regulated by a bell (use bell). A monk or nun knows that time is not their own and when a bell rings, they must stop what they are doing and move on to what is being asked of them. Saint Benedict (who in effect coined the term rule of life in the sixth century) said, the monk must put down his pen without crossing his “t” or dotting his “I”. Monks recognize that there is a proper time and place do things: sleep, eat, pray, work, rest, and to play. Now I realize that we are not monks living in the cloister, but the beauty of living by a rule of life (a sacred rhythm) is that we have a bell that enables us to give each instance of life the time it deserves (not necessarily the time we feel like giving it). In the midst all of the time pressure in our lives, our we use a monastic bell to call us to stop for the Sabbath.
And God calls us to stop for the Sabbath, one day in seven (it may not be on Sunday as people such as doctors and firefighters may have to work on Sundays.).
In fact, God commands us to stop. Eugene Peterson rightly observes nothing less than the force of a commandment has the power to make us stop.4 In Exodus 20 vs. 8 God says: “Six days you shall labour and do all your work. The seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord, our 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 all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.” Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (BTW, the Sabbath day of rest, predates both Christianity and Judaism, it is something we can trace back to the very beginning of creation, and it’s the first thing in Scripture that God calls holy). Sabbath is not just good advice, but it is a practice that honours a need for rest that is woven into the very fabric of our being.
The Sabbath is a gift to us. The Rabbi’s called Sabbath God’s most precious gift to us.
I hope the Sabbath doesn’t feel like an “ought to,” but a gift you fall in love with.
The Sabbath provides us with what Rabbi Abraham Heschel has called a “Sanctuary in Time.”
In his book The Sabbath he writes, “The modern man does not know how to stand still, how to appreciate a moment, an event for its own sake.…
… Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space (physical architectural structures, transportation, mountains, rivers, the things we see and lay our hands on in our daily lives); on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon…to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world… The Sabbath itself is a sanctuary which we build, a sanctuary in time… The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals.”5
Providing Sabbath Space
Sometimes we cannot get away to new space for a vacation or even a retreat. We may not be able to experience Sabbath in a new space, but no matter where we are, by creating a sanctuary in time we enter into a safe, sacred place where we experience rest and joy in the presence of God.
If Sabbath is part of our rule of life, it will become our Sanctuary in Time where we become people who trust God. Have you ever felt, “I want to trust God more.”?
Sabbath is the perfect space for us to grow in our trust of God. The reason we don’t take Sabbath is because we feel with all we need to get done, there’s no way we can take a day off and hope to keep up.
If we set aside a day each week for God and the restoration of our soul, we are trusting that God will provide all that is truly needed.
We began our existence as human beings on the Sabbath. Theologian Karl Barth observed that while Sabbath occurred on the seventh day of creation, Sabbath was the first day for human beings. Eugene Peterson, in his book on the Psalms, Answering God, points out that the Hebrew concept of the day begins with evening, not with the morning and so we begin the day in rest. When we wake we find that God has been working…making cherry blossoms, maple leaves, and puppies… When we know that even before our day begins, God has been at work, we can rest. When we know that God doesn’t sleep—we can.”
In Psalm 127 we are reminded that God provides for us while we sleep. In Hebrew the best translation in the context of Psalm 127:2 is that God provides for us while we sleep. Solomon, who was the author (or at least the subject) of Psalm 127, received his greatest gift, his legendary wisdom, while he slept! When we understand that God provides for us in our sleep, we can sleep.
Sabbath gives us an opportunity to turn from our work and our productivity--things we are tempted to depend on--over to God and experience A Sanctuary in Time.
Sabbath is a Sanctuary in Time because it’s a Sanctuary from Work.
Sabbath for a Student
I’ve shared this story before, but it bears repeating: Marva Dawn, a woman who has preached here at Tenth and is the author of Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, learned how to trust God and rest during a period of time as a student in a demanding PhD program at Notre Dame. Her graduate degree required her to take French, German and Latin all at once.
(She says, “The only way for me to keep the three languages straight was to devise an arduous study schedule beginning each morning at six. I was not a morning person… I worked on Latin till Latin class at nine, after which I studied German till that class. Studying French and class took half the afternoon and then I would swim a while to stay in shape (and cool my brain!). Returning home, I continued working on French till dinner, and then studied German till I went to bed at eleven. Each night I dropped into bed utterly exhausted, but the intense pace was necessary since, after only six weeks of class, I had to be able to translate a thousand words in a two-hour test in each language…)
What enabled me to keep following this absurd schedule every day was my anticipation, celebration, and remembrance of the Sabbath. Toward the end of the week, the knowledge that Sabbath would soon come gave me incredibly powerful comfort and courage to persist, even as, at the beginning of the week, memories of the Sabbath delight I had just experienced motivated me to begin again. And on Sundays ceasing to work at languages set me free for lots of fun…
Every Sunday I enjoyed worship and Bible study, ate different foods than I ate during the rest of the week and engaged in relaxing and creative activities. Sometimes I played the organ for worship, went to the beach or swimming pool, took long walks, or played in the parks in the afternoon with friends or by myself. Most of all, Sunday was a day for enjoying God’s presence.”
Even now though things are not as intense, Marva says, each week she experiences a lovely moment of release when she goes to bed on Saturday nights. She says, “I sleep differently on Saturday nights because the Sabbath has begun.”
When I was in graduate school I had not read Marva’s book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, but I felt convicted to honor the Sabbath commandment by taking a 24-hour period away from study once a week. Because I from time to time would have exams on Monday morning, I decided I would take Sabbath from dinner time on Saturday to Sunday evening dinner. Sabbath enabled me to study more effectively the other six days and made school a more enjoyable experience.
Whether we are student, or working, at home, part of our Sabbath rule of life--will mean we do something different on our Sabbath than what we do the other six days of our week.
I have a professor friend whose work involves a lot of mental effort. He teaches, he researches, he writes. For him, on Sabbath (though he might not use the term) means go fish. It is very restorative for him. He tempted… Now if this person were a fisherman, fishing probably wouldn’t be restorative for him. So part of what Sabbath involves us doing something different from what we would normally do the other 5 or 6 days of the week.
What does Sabbath keeping look like for a mother with young children? Jennifer Tong raised that question on our Tenth blog.
(Karla Falk 9:30, Louise Reilly 11:30 a.m.)
Karla:
How do you keep the Sabbath as mom with young kids?
It's not much that we do to keep the Sabbath--there are a couple of key points from my perspective. The first is to limit the amount of housework (no laundry, no cleaning, no grocery shopping) and the second is to use the kids’ nap time for personal rest--either an actual nap for me or reading for pleasure. I like to cook, so I don't find it onerous to cook on the Sabbath but we do often order in on Sunday nights. Then there's less work for clean up after supper. The other item is that sometimes, depending on how our weeks have gone, Kevin will get up with the kids--I'm usually awake, but to not have to be the first response for diaper changes and breakfast is a welcome rest.
Other little pieces of Sabbath come on a weekly or yearly basis. Kevin and I hire a sitter once a week for a date night. We either take in a play at a local playhouse or go out for supper. For the next few weeks we’ll be taking some French tutoring together. We find this time of connection with each other essential in a busy week, especially when meal times are very child-centered and we have commitments in the evenings.
Another wonderful way to have a Sabbath on a yearly basis is the Mom’s Retreat that the Thursday morning mom’s group organizes. I’ve been leading the mom’s group for 2 years now and have attended 3 retreats. Even when I lead and have preparations in terms of worship, I find the weekend to be a wonderful break from the demands of my work of motherhood and household management. Our next retreat is coming up on the weekend of February 26-28 and we have spaces we need to fill, so I invite you to join us for a weekend of fellowship, worship, rest, and perhaps best of all, someone else cooking for us. Please talk to me after the service if you are interested—as I said, we need more people to sign up or else we’ll have to cancel this wonderful event.
Louise:
When did you first begin to intentionally observe Sabbath as a family?
It really began for us when my husband Phil started here at Tenth as Pastor of the Third Service. As some of you will know, Phil was also working a full-time job in business while pastoring the Third Service, the combination of which (though incredibly life-giving for him) was also quite all-consuming. We have two young children, at that time very small, and more and more we were realizing that a lack of boundaries on both of our parts was leading to us having less and less time together as a family. In addition to being a full-time Mum, I also work part-time from home – generally either very late at night or very early in the morning while my children are asleep - and so there was always the feeling that I was never quite away from my work, even at weekends. As we began to recognize this, we sought to change it … and without even really recognizing it, we began to observe Sabbath together.
So, how does Sabbath look for you as a family?
Well, given the nature of Phil’s work when we first began this journey, it made sense for us to set Saturday apart as our day of rest, and we have continued to do that even after Phil stepped down from his pastoral role here at Tenth. For me, the key difference on a Saturday is that I put the laptop away, and do not, under any circumstances, do my (paid) work! I am able to set both my work aside, and the worry about if and when it’s going to get done. This is very freeing, and allows me to be fully present to my family & to enjoy the time I have with them. Having children certainly redefines the meaning of “rest” though, and so while Saturdays may not involve as much pondering and reflection as Phil and I might like, there is a lot of focus on fun, and on simply being together. We often take day trips, or more often than not we wander around Granville Island together eating sausage rolls and watching street performers! We take the opportunity to connect with friends too, and enjoy the freedom of doing this without the pressures that week-days bring. We also try to avoid cooking wherever possible on a Saturday – just little things like this make the day more restful and refreshing.
How has this impacted your lives individually and as a family?
I know that for Phil and I, we now really understand Sabbath as a gift from God. For me, the dynamic of my part-time work is incredibly tiring, but I now have a day in my week where this is set aside and replaced with physical refreshment and rest. Our boys, though still very young, know that we will have a day together each week and they look forward to this. By intentionally taking Saturdays as Sabbath, we are accepting this amazing gift, and are already beginning to wonder how we survived without it!
A friend of mine grabs a little rest from parenting by finding another mother with kids who are close in age and get together—letting kids take care of themselves and experience a Sabbath from the routine.
Sabbath for almost all of us will mean—unplugging from this (show laptop or backberry).
It means we won’t be creating our to do list (unless it is to just dump something from our brain so that we can be free of it), we won’t do wedding planning, taxes.
What about shopping?
On my Sabbath day my wife, young son, and I may go to a store we can walk to not far from our home, pick up some food at the deli for dinner. A little shopping feels permissible, but if I say, “Well now that we are at the store, I might as well generate a list of all the things we need this week”... then shopping starts to feel like work for me and I feel like I am violating the Sabbath. We can sense intuitively when something crosses the line and becomes work.
But I would say in general, without being legalistic, we ought to do away with our stock up at Costco or getting all what we need at London Drugs shopping on our Sabbath and minimize our shopping in general and savour the gifts we cannot buy—the priceless gifts of God, his son Jesus, our friends, family, to rest and enjoy our bodies and use them in ways that bring joy.
Our Sabbath is meant to be a gift A Sanctuary in Time (not a Sanctuary in Costco).
As a new parent, I revised my rule of life. I thought more about how I could do my “ought to” shopping on days other than my Sabbath… It’s a good thing that many people have 2 days off each week. One can be a Sabbath and other can be a day for getting the things done we need to do: shopping, paying bills, laundry. (It takes some work to enter the Sabbath. Busyness can be a form of sloth because we neglected plan for rest. The book of Hebrews chapter 4:11 make every effort to enter into God’s Sabbath rest.).
Do What Brings Life
Some people grew up in strict homes where as children the Sabbath was a dreary day of don’ts: don’t play baseball, don’t play games, don’t chew gum. The only thing they were allowed to do on the Sabbath was stay in the house and read the Bible…
How do we honor the God’s intention for the Sabbath?
We honour God’s intention by choosing things that draws us to God and things that bring life.
The Rabbi said that Sabbath is God most precious gift. It’s a Sanctuary in Time.
Jesus in response to the teachers of law who so multiplied the rules and regulations around the Sabbath so that it was no longer a joy, but a burden, no longer a delight, but a duty, said, “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.”
Vancouver Island pastor Mark Buchanan says on the Sabbath, Embrace what gives life.
(I may use this)
“Sabbath… is a reprieve from doing what you ought to do, even though the list of oughts is infinitely long and never done. Oughts are tyrants, noisy and surly, chronically dissatisfied. Sabbath is the day you trade places with them: they go into the salt mine and you go out dancing. It is the one day when the only thing you must do is to not do the things you must.
What is life-giving for you? (a moment to reflect on that.)
Like for many of you, being outside is restorative for me. Walking, trailing running, hiking, or sailing are centering life-giving experiences for me.
Sabbath to a great day eat different foods, to take a nap, to spend time with people you love, to make love for married couples, and most important to celebrate and worship God and to give thanks for his gift of life. Sabbath is a day to delight in God, in people, in the gifts that God has given you. Sabbath is a day to connect with God, ourselves, with others and all that ennobles.
The fourth commandment says that the Sabbath day is to be a day where we stop and set apart a day for the Lord, it is to be kept holy (emphasis added). It means we are to set apart Sabbath for a sacred purpose.
We’re in a series on a rule of life. A rule of life isn’t just about adding things (use the sheet). It’s also about subtracting things. “Spirituality is not about addition, but about subtraction,” said Meister Eckhart.
Some of us need to create a ‘to do’ list, and some of us need to create or a ‘stop-doing’ list. A healthy spirituality includes pruning, cutting some good things so that what is most important and enduring flourishes. Sometimes we need to say no to say yes.
Everyone says, “I’m so busy.” But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, Our busyness is like the weather. Everyone complains about it, but no one does anything about it. We can do something about it by pruning and by committing to stopping on the Sabbath. Why not during Lent, for the next 40 days before Easter, commit to honour a 24-hour Sabbath?
Part of way we develop our rule of life will include pruning so that we can enjoy what the Rabbi’s called God’s most precious gift, Sabbath, our Sanctuary in Time.
posted by Shigematsu at 4:41 PM
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