Sabbath Reflection


We are most deeply asleep at the switch
when we fancy we control 
any switches at all. We sleep
to time’s hurdy-gurdy;
we wake, if we ever wake,
to the silence of God.
—Annie Dillard


In our society you’re rich if you have a lot of money, but no time. And you’re poor if you have a lot of time, but no money.
Apparently those are the alternatives. 
And honestly, while we may have some reservations about being rich, there’s no question that we’re terrified of becoming poor. So we trade in our time for money. The result is that we have more than enough money, and not nearly enough time…
No wonder, then, that the commandment to honor the Sabbath doesn’t come naturally. 
It isn’t easy for us to just stop. To do nothing. (There’s a paradox! Do Nothing.)
We’ve got to be working. We’ve got to put our time to use. 
One person I spoke to said the reason it’s so hard to rest, is because she constantly felt like she needed to justify her existence. 
What a thing to say!
And that’s probably the heart of the matter, more often than not. Don’t you think?
We think we have to be the ones to prove our worth.

Deep down that’s what the Sabbath is about, too.
The command to honor and keep the Sabbath says, on the one hand, that we’re not the ones in control. God is. We stop to remind ourselves that. That there is no way we could ever prove our worth, when it comes to God. 
On the other hand, the command to honor and keep the Sabbath also says, that we don’t have to! We exist because God has called us into existence. We can rest in that fact. We don’t have to prove our worth, to God or anyone else. The very fact that God is, at this moment, calling you into existence, is all the evidence you need to know that God takes delight in you. Right now.
And that’s the real punch of the Sabbath. 
It points to that, what God is up to in Jesus Christ, is what God’s been up to ever since the very beginning to this very moment!
The God you have, is a God of love. A God who doesn’t wait for creation to ascend into heaven. A God who doesn’t wait for us to prove ourselves.
Instead, in great love, this God descends to us! Jesus is the ultimate revelation of this love.
And that is why we honor the Sabbath. 
Because we don’t have to prove our worth. Because the God we have, is a God of love.
So on the Sabbath, we stop. We rest in God. We trust God’s promises to hold true. 


For a people as run ragged as we are, the Sabbath turns out to be Good News. Not just that we can rest, but that the God we have calls us to it. Because the God we have, loves us.

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