How To Find Rest In a Stressed Out World
Most people are familiar with the concept of Sabbath but we've also lost sight of what it actually means. Whether you are religious or not, this may be a concept everyone should consider.
This is one of the first articles I published before I began to grow a readership. I don’t think it got enough love, so I’m reposting and resending it out! Hope you find some meaning and value in it!
In America, we still talk a lot about “honoring the Sabbath” but it has largely become synonymous with going to church. In truth, going to church was never what the Sabbath meant or was intended for. The concept of Sabbath was first introduced in Exodus 20:8-11, as part of the Ten Commandments. It says:
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping 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, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 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.”
Nowhere does it say anything about going to church. In fact, the Sabbath in the Old Testament was observed from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, the exact same way devout Jews honor the Sabbath to this day. Sunday was actually the first day of the Jewish week, similar to what we now call Monday. In the first century, People of The Way (as they called themselves then) began to gather organically on the first day of the week to sing, pray and worship. No one “commanded” them to, they just did it on their own. The first day of their week was Sunday, however, which is where our tradition of going to church on Sunday came from. But “going to church” was never what “honoring the Sabbath” was intended to mean.
For those Bible scholars among us, you may recall that for the first 40 years after the Israelites were freed from slavery to the Egyptians, God provided food every single day in the form of something called manna. Six days of the week the Israelites had to get up every morning and collect enough manna for them to eat that day. By the next day, however, it was no longer fit to eat, so they had to get up again the next morning and collect enough manna for that day. On the sixth day, they had to collect enough for two days and that manna would not go bad until the third day, when they had to get right back up and start all over again.
From day one, this is a rhythm that God established. Go out, collect enough manna for today and then tomorrow, go do it again. Now, I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that collecting enough manna just for that day didn’t take all that long. Kind of makes you wonder what life might look like - even today - if all we worried about each day was just getting what we needed to make it through that day. People in recovery know about this - they call it living “one day at a time.” In Matthew Chapter 6, Jesus tells us not to store up treasures on earth (verse 19), not to worry about what we will eat or what we will drink (verse 25) or to worry about tomorrow (verse 34). How might your life be different if you literally only worried about making sure you had enough to make it through today.?
I’m sure that even back then, there were plenty of people that tried to collect enough for a few days or the entire week, but nope - if they did that, it just went bad. They could literally only collect what they needed for that day and then the next day, they had to get right back up and do it all over again. In addition, the manna was just laying there on the ground for anyone to pick up, so there was nothing to sell. There was literally no way to “get ahead.” I think there is a lesson in that somewhere. Do you think maybe to this very day, we are still trying to “get ahead”? The question is: get ahead of what? You see, although God “commanded” the Israelites to take a day off, it wasn’t meant as a benefit to God, but a gift to man.
But what did man do with that gift? He immediately went out and created some 200-300 laws regarding what it meant “to rest.” To this very day, there are rabbinical scholars that literally do nothing but argue Shabbat (Sabbath) Law. Let that sink in a minute. Shabbat LAW. In fact, this is a quote from chabad.org.
“The Shabbat laws are quite complex, requiring careful study and a qualified teacher.”
What God said was “work six days, then take a day off.” Seems pretty simple to me, right? But then man had to come in and make hundreds of rules about what it meant to “rest”! This is what we call “religion.” We often think that religion comes from God, but it doesn’t. Religion comes from man. In my experience - after walking away from “the church” and studying the Bible for myself - God’s rules tend to be gentle and gracious and for our benefit. Men’s rules tend to be rigid and harsh and often for man’s own benefit. Why was it so important for man to define what it meant “to rest”? Shouldn’t that be for me to figure out? Yes, it should, but like always, man had to make himself judge and jury over everything, including what it means to rest.
As we all know, some people find it restful or relaxing to paint on their day off or perhaps to sew or crochet. But some people actually paint for a living or work in a sweatshop, so maybe painting or sewing is the last thing they would want to do on their day off - if they even get a day off at all. Some people want to spend their day off hiking or doing something physical like playing volleyball or skiing. Other people (like myself) want to stay curled up on the couch reading or binge watching TV. What it means to rest is different for all of us, so who gets to decide what it has to mean for me?
Well, nobody, that’s who. Just because men decided they should be in charge of deciding what it means to rest, doesn’t mean I have to listen to them. After all, Jesus didn’t. In Mark 2:23-28 Jesus was walking through some grain fields and his disciples picked some heads of grain. The Pharisees got all hot and bothered because it was “against the law” to harvest on the Sabbath. But it wasn’t against God’s law it was only against all the “laws” that man had made up. In fact, Jesus even said: The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27)
The Sabbath was meant as a gift.
On the seventh day, there was no manna. There was nothing to do but rest. First, God instilled the habit of resting in Her people for forty years. Then She commanded them to keep to the schedule she created for them. I know we just love to always think of God as a man but does that or does that not sound exactly like something God the mother would do?
Honoring the Sabbath is actually an act of faith that requires humility and trust. Taking a day off - a day of rest - means that you actually have to trust that that Universe will take care of itself while you are indisposed resting. It means you have to actually believe that the world can take care of itself without your 24/7 supervision. It means trusting that just like God/ The Universe provided manna every day for 40 years, God/ The Universe will also provide whatever you need to take one full, complete, entire day off out of every seven days.
Do you think maybe we spend a lot of our day (and our energy) doing things we really don’t need to do simply because they make us feel more important?
In America, we pride ourselves on how hard we work. We worship the idea of grinding hard and putting in 50, 60, 70-hour weeks. Our common response to “how are you” is often “oh man, SO busy!” We’ve made exhaustion a badge of honor. So at the tail end of a global pandemic, how you feeling about that exhaustion? Do you feel like a million bucks - like a genuine hero, or do you feel like you want to crawl into a hole and die?
So many people are struggling with burnout right now and do you think this might be why? We literally don’t know what it means to rest anymore and even if we did, we can’t. Our culture has a new phrase called “stresslaxing” which is getting stressed out at even the thought of rest! This is how bad our obsession with busyness has gotten. Our sense of value or importance has become so deeply intertwined with our sense of accomplishment that we literally cannot even stop anymore. This is why taking a Sabbath is an act of both faith and humility. It’s saying I can’t carry the weight of the world on my shoulders anymore.
Perhaps today would be a good day to get some rest. Perhaps it’s time we re-evaluated the rhythm of our life. Did you ever think that running on energy drinks and caffeine may not actually be the fulfillment of living your best life? Is there any possibility that maybe - just maybe - living your best life might actually involve not just a nap now and then, but a full, complete day of rest EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK.
Now, I’m not one to try and push religious ideas down anyone’s throat, but I’m thinking there may not be a single human on earth - religious or otherwise - that couldn’t benefit from taking a day off, every single week. The question is, can you get out of your own way enough to believe that the Universe will get by just fine without your 24/7 supervision. I think it can. But maybe that’s just me.
In the Jewish religious we have Sabbath or Shabbos as we call it. In my own life I have started to honor Shabbos again in little ways. I started to attend shul on Saturdays and when invited I will accept an invite for Shabbos lunch after services. I'm learning that Shabbos is about elevating the day, making it special and part of making it special is turning off the regular routine - usually this entails not driving or using electricity but even if one is not particularly stricly observant (I'm not strict so I will drive and use my phone ) I am still becoming conscious that I want to make the day special and elevate it in some way - do something special, honor it. Whether it be do yoga, or write, or read, or spend time at a Shabbos lunch - it is about stopping and acknowledging that there is something unique about the day. Wonderful article. Thank you for posting it. 🙏🏻