A Word from Pastor Lisa: On Rest
Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy. Six days you may work and do all your tasks, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not do any work on it—not you, your sons or daughters, your male or female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you. Because the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
—Exodus 20:8 (CEB)
I don’t wear my dressy watch much these days. When I put it on for church, I noticed the time was just a few minutes slower than it should have been. It’s no wonder. Time has been moving strangely in this pandemic. The shut down and stay-at-home orders have made days drag on and weeks go quickly. Some of us are working harder than ever, trying to balance work or unemployment applications, caring for children or senior adults, and maintaining the home front. We’re exhausted and longing for a break. Others of us are anxious from all the extra time on our hands and the lack of human connection. One day blurs into the next, and it never seems to end.
How do we create Sabbath rest during this pandemic? Sabbath is sacred time set apart from work to rest and be fully present with God and one another. Our Jewish friends honor the Sabbath from Friday evening to Saturday evening, and most Christians on Sunday. Some of you remember when the Sabbath was kept very strictly. The practice of Sabbath is rooted in the creation story, where for six figurative days the Lord made the earth, sea, and everything in them, but on the seventh day rested. Honoring the Sabbath and keeping it holy is one of the commandments given by God to Moses. Keeping Sabbath is a counter-cultural practice in a world of scarcity that never stops demanding more of us.
Jewish Scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was very devoted to his own practice of Sabbath, reflects in his book The Sabbath: “The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”
How? We reflect on the creation of the world by being intentional about our time. We draw healthy boundaries. For me, that means putting an away message up on my email on Fridays, which is my day off, and then resisting the urge to check messages. We need a day when we aren’t tangling masses of availability. Some of us are working from home right now, and it’s helpful to move rooms, change clothes, or do some sort of act to ritualize moving from work to rest. Others of us are retired but manage to still fill every moment of our days. When we’re intentional about the boundaries, we can create space to be with God and with those who matter most to us.
We connect with the holiness of time by opening up sacred space in our lives. We are attached to our electronic devices because they are our lifelines right now for work and play. We love our streaming services because they’re an escape from reality. But sometimes we need to turn off the devices and rest our souls through prayer, worship, reading, eating a homemade meal, walking outside, or sleeping.
We experience the mystery of creation by being part of it. This is a beautiful time of year in Indiana as the flowers continue to bloom. We’ve got a robin’s nest we’re carefully checking on each day. The birds, rabbits, and deer are wonderful to behold. What a glorious opportunity to give thanks for God’s creation that is undaunted by the crisis in the human world.
We’ve got a holiday weekend in front of us. How will you deepen your practice of Sabbath to make the holiday a holy-day?