An Invitation to the Sabbath Way

My sister is a busy woman. She and her husband have four kids, ages ten to seventeen. They live outside of town in a house with some property, along with a dog and several chickens. My brother-in-law works full-time outside the home, and she works part-time from home—in addition to her full-time gig managing all the logistics of their home life with kids in different schools, making meals, cleaning, doing chores, and so on. It’s a lot.  

We were talking recently about the Sabbath, and she expressed what so many people today feel when considering the Sabbath. She desperately wants it, and even needs it, but with life full to the brim and overflowing—with homework; sports, music, and theater practices; church classes twice a week; and all-day tournaments on Saturdays—if Sunday afternoon isn’t given to laundry and cleaning, the house will quickly fall to pieces. There just isn’t a nook or cranny big enough for all the overflow that would be created by giving an entire day to Sabbath each week. And if she attempted it, the other days would become so full that she would either collapse exhausted into the Sabbath each week, or never truly be able to rest knowing what insanity awaited her as soon as the Sabbath ended.  

I hear similar laments from my students at Western Theological Seminary when I require them to practice two twenty-four-hour Sabbaths during our unit on Genesis 1. Everybody has busy and full lives, managing schoolwork, internships, and family obligations in addition to side hustles and the desire to also have a life as a grad student. Life is just too full to fit the Sabbath into it.  

Perhaps you can relate to my students and my sister. Whether you’re a parent, a grandparent, or single, or whether you’re a college student, a grad student, or a pastor, I imagine you often feel like life is so full that there simply isn’t room to block off twenty-four hours on your calendar without creating a cascade of chaos on the remaining days that will erase whatever rest you found on the Sabbath. 

Herein lies both the reality and the problem. My sister and my students are right. They don’t have time for Sabbath. They know that if they tried to squeeze a daylong pause into their lives, it would feel akin to cramming an eleventh passenger into an eight-passenger van. It would be unwise and unsustainable—and could prove to be dangerous.

Practicing Sabbath Is Hard Work 

The uncomfortable truth is that the only way any of us can fully experience the gifts of Sabbath is to stop trying to fit it into our lives. Sabbath isn’t designed to “fit” into our lives; it is designed to take over our lives—in the best way imaginable. This is because our lives are not designed with the Sabbath in mind. Quite the opposite, in fact. The cultural, political, philosophical, and economic forces that shape our lives and our choices are forming us in ways opposed to the Sabbath, which makes it very hard to rest. The irony of contemporary Sabbath practice is that rest is really hard work.  

Anyone who wants to experience all that the Sabbath offers will have to reorient their lives around it. They will have to fit their lives into its patterns and values, not the other way around. And that will be costly, even radical. A rest that is radical isn’t easy or convenient. The Sabbath way is a narrow way; it demands something of us. If we walk it, we need to be willing to go where it leads. We need to let go of things that might feel important or even necessary. We need to make room for Sabbath in our lives.

What Is the Sabbath About? 

My book The Sabbath Way is intended to help you figure out both why and how to make room for the Sabbath. But it will not offer you “seven steps to a successful Sabbath.” There is no cut-and-paste approach to Sabbath because every person, family, and situation is unique, and any attempt to standardize it is bound to feel oppressive or stifling to some. Instead, Sabbath is an invitation to let go of rigid rules and embrace delight, to let go of striving and embrace ease, to let go of distraction and embrace the present moment. 

Sabbath is about learning to trust that God is God and that the world will not fall to pieces if we stop for a day to breathe and play. It’s about believing that we are worthy of experiencing delight and that such a pursuit is worth our time and intention. It’s about reconnecting with what brings us delight and draws out the child trapped inside the adult stressing over this and that. It’s about recovering a sense of wonder and awe at the sheer miracle of life. It’s about finding ways to feel God’s abiding presence in the world and in our lives. It’s about falling more deeply in love with God and with the world that mediates God’s presence and love.  

If all of this sounds like a pipe dream to you, like maybe this could work for other people with fewer responsibilities, less stress, fewer demands, more time, more money, and more flexibility than you, I want you to know I hear you. Or, if you’ve spent years deferring or denying your desires to the point that you don’t even know what you long for anymore, I want you to know I see you too. I’ve been there. And a critical part of what got me from there to here was my commitment to showing up each week to the Sabbath with as much of myself as was available to me, and then bringing as much of that as I could with me into the week. And every week, the Sabbath met me there and helped guide me here—and it continues to guide me onward.  

But what’s even more important is that God sees you—right where you are. The Spirit of God longs for you to be fully alive, and the world needs your unique vitality. Wherever and whoever you are—whether you’re a parent of young children who is sleeping little and stressing a lot just to survive, a college student searching for your purpose and your people, a pastor continually guiding your flock toward wholeness while neglecting yourself, or a retiree seeking a legacy in the sunset years of life—the Sabbath can meet you where you are and guide you toward what thriving and wholeness might look like for you in this season.

The Sabbath Is About Transformation 

I believe in the power of the Sabbath to transform lives. I don’t really understand it, but I trust it, and I’ve seen it happen over and over—to my students, to my friends, and to myself. It won’t happen overnight, and it won’t be accompanied by fireworks or a laser light show. But it will happen—slowly, often imperceptibly, over the course of time. As you lean into trust, into gratitude, into delight, and into presence, your heart will expand, your delight muscles will get strong and toned, you will grow in self-compassion, your commitment to justice will deepen, and your increased capacity to love your neighbor as yourself may surprise you. 

Writing The Sabbath Way was my attempt to describe the transformational journey that begins when you reorient your life around the Sabbath. I wrote The Sabbath Way to inspire you to adopt a Sabbath practice in your life and to convince you that it’s possible—not just possible, but your birthright—to experience the joy, abundance, contentment, and delight the Sabbath offers, regardless of your life’s circumstances. 

My hope is that you will take to heart the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who saw that his fellow Israelites stood at a threshold between the status quo and abundance and begged them to enter in.

Stand at the crossroads and look,
ask for the ancient paths—
where the good way lies—
and walk in it to find rest for your souls.
Jeremiah 6:16 

My hope is that you will find ways of experiencing the rest your soul craves. The Sabbath can’t make your children fall asleep at night or stop them from crying; it can’t resolve tensions between coworkers, secure a raise, or complete your never-ending to-do list; it can’t snap its fingers and make your stress go away, resolve the tensions in your marriage, or heal the body of someone you love. What it can do is give you space to process these dynamics and the complex emotions they create. It can reconnect you to gratitude by teaching you to live in the present moment. It can remind you of your priorities and expose the ways your life is out of sync with them. It can empower you to live as an act of protest against forces that equate your value with what you do, how fast you move, and how busy you are. It can make room for you to laugh and cry and sing and dance and sleep and play—in short, it can reorient you toward what brings you joy and delight.  

I am with you at the crossroads. The Sabbath is calling. Will you come?