There are times in life when other people’s rest bothers me. The sleeping husband beside me when I’m suffering from worry and insomnia. The kids watching TV and their groans when I ask them to clean up. That person in the group project who is very willing to let others shoulder the work.
And yet, I have mixed emotions when I’m trying to rest and other people around me are working. Or when I’m seeing someone else cooking, doing dishes, serving me when I feel like I should be helping. Rest is a hard concept for us in our culture. A culture where achievement and busyness are the gods that we live by. Where we are not measured by the quality of our relationships but by the quality of our accomplishments.
When I speak to people about the Sabbath it garners a mixed reaction. The reaction is either that they know they should take a Sabbath but don’t, or that they feel guilt about taking a sabbath and resentful when other people do. I have experienced all of these things at various times and in various measures.
We know we should take a Sabbath, but don’t. We hear teaching on rest but think deep down in our hearts that it’s not available to us. I have even heard someone say that they don’t take a Sabbath because God is their rest. I don’t buy it. Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments, it is important. But why?
Yes, we are wired not to work 24/7, our bodies wear down and break down when the pace is too high. But in reading through Exodus where God was teaching the people about Sabbath, I realized that there are different layers to Sabbath than our own need for rest.
” Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed.” Exodus 23:12
Sabbath isn’t just about us. This verse comes in the context of other issues of Justice and Mercy. And I think this verse stretches Sabbath beyond a personal commandment to an issue of how we can promote health and rest in other people. How difficult is it when you’re trying to rest and someone is resentfully working around you? I’ve been the instigator and recipient of that. The “could we just do this one more thing before…” idea that we have that if we just have this task done then we can truly rest. But this can trap us and other people around us. If we know the importance of rest, this commandment of God for our good, we must not only seek it ourselves but make it available to others. Other people in our household. Our roommates, our spouses, our children, our parents.
And why is this so important? Besides the physical and mental well beingness of it all that God has provided for, Sabbath is intended to remind us of the state of our relationship with God. Deuteronomy 5:15 says about Sabbath “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.” I haven’t been a slave in Egypt but I have been a slave to my sin, held fast by aspects of culture, to external expectations, and to my own ambitions. But in Christ I’m free. I’m free to be countercultural in how I choose to honor God and how he made us by resting. I’m free to honor others as created by God and support their need for rest as well.
Sabbath is mean to be freeing. Not guilt making in us or by us to others. God wants to show us that we are not slaves to what our lives were like before and the external expectations that can overwhelm us. And we can be freed from the pursuit of being loved by others because of how we serve them. Because we serve God and his love for us is holistic. Body, mind, and spirit.