Connecting with God: Sabbath Keeping by Denise Floe, Director of Small Group Ministry
Every calendar starts with empty, open pages, but it’s not too long before the spaces are filled with all the things that keep life busy. What will fill the now-empty pages on your calendar? Will there be any room for God? Will there be enough room for rest and for restoring your energy? Will there be any space to do things that are nurturing and life-giving for you?
When you think of spiritual practices, you might go to reading Scripture or to prayer, but keeping the Sabbath is also a spiritual practice – something that draws us to God and deepens our relationship with the God that loves and sustains us. The Sabbath is actually one of the commandments!
Remember the sabbath day, and 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; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. – Exodus 20:8-11
But, it just be might be one of the toughest spiritual practices for us in our busy, multi-tasking, be-productive world. For some of us, thoughts of the Sabbath might bring memories of stores closed on Sunday, an obligation to attend worship, and other things that children find boring. But the Sabbath is really much, much more—much more meaningful and much more fun!
For me, Sabbath is unstructured, open time to spend with God in worship, prayer, reading, journaling or other spiritual practices. It’s also simply time to rest—something God wants deeply for each of our lives. If that time ends up being a nap—I think God is smiling on the nap time. It’s also time to enjoy the things that God has given us that bring us joy, in other words, play! This might be reading a book just for fun, taking a slow walk, enjoying a meal and taking time to actually savor each taste, being alone or being with people who bring us joy (whichever seems right at the time). Whatever the Sabbath contains, it is time set apart in our lives.
While the Bible encourages us to spend one entire day a week as a Sabbath, most of us would find that to be a challenging starting place. If you can’t do an entire day a week, start with a Sabbath hour or a Sabbath morning or one day out of the month. And, it doesn’t have to be Sunday. Your Sabbath may work better at another time of the week. The point is to spend the time doing things that are restorative of your relationship with God and restore you to be the person God intended you to be.
What can you do to get started? A good beginning point might be to write some Sabbath into your calendar. Schedule some time to be “unscheduled” and open to listen and pay attention to God’s movement in your life.
Questions for Reflection
What would you do with an extra hour this week? How about an extra morning or afternoon? How does that reflect what God wants in your life? Can you make it happen?
What are the things that you want to set aside so that your Sabbath can be a time of rest, time with God, and enjoyment?
Schedule a time to experience a Sabbath. If you can’t do a whole day, try for a portion of a day—what is a starting point that would work for you? Or, what are 1-2 Sabbath moments that you could do to remind yourself that you belong to a loving God?
