The Art Of Sabbathing.

We all know that I've been learning a lot so far during my time in Montréal. My days and weeks are filled with things like meetings, reading books, writing reports on the books, spending time with my City Group family, choosing songs for Sundays, watching tutorial videos, making connections with people from the church, and so on.

There are even some obscure things tucked in there like helping people move or babysitting kids from the church so their parents can sit in on a meeting.

I work from Monday to Friday, and then I serve at church on Sunday morning. My only "day off" really is Saturday.

Aaand then of course I have to do normal adult-y things like laundry and grocery shopping and cleaning and cooking.

I mean, it's all been a super practical way of teaching me independence. But it also makes me feel like a very busy lady.

So I'm here to say today that one of the greatest things I've been learning from this internship is the art of taking a Sabbath.

Source: Sylvie Tittel; unsplash.com

As Christians, we hear the word Sabbath spoken quite often. We know that's it's part of the Ten Commandments:

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labour, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God." {Exodus 20:8-10a - ESV}

Because this commandment is found in the Old Testament, oftentimes people attempt to write it off, claiming it was something for the Israelites back then and that it doesn't apply to us now. But how does that logic even work when we say that the Ten Commandments still apply to us??? 

It's also found numerous other times in the Bible; I'm not saying that it's only talked about in the OT. A New Testament reference I came across in my reading the other week was in Hebrews:

"So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from His." {Hebrews 4:9-10}

I can admit that I never took Sabbathing seriously until starting my internship.

I didn't think I had enough time.

I thought I had too many things to do.

This type of thinking likely stems from our twenty-first century society that thrives on being busy. When people ask how we're doing, we regularly say, "Oh, I'm doing well. I'm REALLY busy, but y'know, things are good!" It's almost like you're not doin it right if you ain't on-the-verge-of-burn-out type of busy.

But I remember the first Église 21 staff meeting that I sat in on, on the very first morning of my internship. Norton and Joey told me that having a  Sabbath would be put into my weekly internship calendar. I was told that I wouldn't do anything work-related on my Sabbath. Norton told me that if I want to sleep all day on my Sabbath, I could do that. Now that definitely got my attention. 😴😴😴

Seeing as Saturday is my only full day off, that's my Sabbath. And as of yet, I haven't slept all day, however this past Saturday I woke up at 11:00 and felt no shame. Actually, I was pretty impressed with myself because I never sleep in that late! This Saturday was also the first Sabbath where I broke the no work-related things rule, but it was only to send a work-related email, so it wasn't even that bad.

Norton informed me of the Four Steps To A Meaningful Sabbath, this being taken from Peter Scazerro, author of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (and The Emotionally Healthy Leader aka the book I talked about in my last post). The four steps are: Stop, Rest, Delight, and Contemplate.

Stop: is all about "[recognizing that] we will never finish all our goals and projects, and that God is on the throne, managing quite well in ruling the universe without our help."
This is such a humbling and slap-in-the-face-of-reality quote from Scazerro.

Rest: encourages us to "engage in activities that restore and replenish us - from napping, hiking, reading, and eating good food to enjoying hobbies and playing sports."
See?! Sleeping in until 11:00 falls under this step. And so does drinking good coffee with a good friend, which is one of my fav things to do.

Delight: reminds us that God pronounced His creation to be "very good", and asks us to reflect on what it is that brings us joy and delight. Scazerro tells us that "God invites us to join in the celebration, to enjoy and delight in his creation and all the gifts He offers us in it."

Contemplate: is a call to remember that "pondering the love of God is the central focus of our Sabbaths." Scazerro talks about the fact that Sabbathing isn't about "taking time off from God; we are drawing closer to Him." And we know, as Christians, that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

So do that. Enjoy God. Start taking the art of Sabbath seriously. It can be relaxing and fun, and drawing closer to God is definitely satisfying and brings the greatest sense of joy and rest.