On the Sabbath

The year was 2020, but the 2020 before the world crashed down on us with the beginning of the pandemic in March. It was January, or maybe February. The world was cold, and I was exhausted, burnt-out, and a little sad.

I don’t remember the moment, but at some point I came to a decision: I will start practicing the Sabbath.

That decision is turning out to have been the watershed in my walk with the Spirit.

John Mark Comer says in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry that “Sabbath is the primary discipline, or practice, by which we cultivate the spirit of restfulness in our lives as a whole” (p.150, emphasis his). This has been my experience.

That first winter, I just knew I had to Sabbath. I don’t remember the rationale, I just knew that practicing the Sabbath was no longer an option for me. Despite this conviction, I gave the Lord as little as possible - Sunday afternoons, because the morning was already wasted for productivity anyways, and I had too much to do to give up all of Saturday and half of Sunday.

Still, the Lord blessed even my halfhearted, reluctant, and stingy sacrifice. On Sundays that semester, I learned the joy of a Sunday afternoon nap, the pleasure of a walk, and the beauty of a coffee shop with a book instead of a laptop.

And I learned the deep-seated angst that comes from consciously rejecting a life identified by productivity. Resting was (still is) hard.

You know that visceral panicked moment when you think you missed an assignment? That’s what the Sabbath felt like at first, just imagine that feeling for a whole afternoon. At first (and even still), choosing to stop felt like getting behind. The tally of what I wasn’t doing just kept running up in my head while I rested. And yet, the Lord blessed even this half-rest.

In March, Covid happened. I went home and read The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry for the first time while I sat on the floor of my childhood bedroom. In the quiet of my homeschool room, I discovered that I could learn the same amount of organic chemistry in less time if I was less uptight about it. I went for walks and looked at the shadows of leaves on the ground and took exams in the Carolina sun on my back porch and made a chocolate cake to celebrate the end of the school year and discovered the freedom of aimless drives through the country. Life forced me to slow down, and my whole life became a Sabbath.

They say that if you don’t choose to rest, your rest (or the lack thereof) will catch up to you. Even in the Bible, God warns his people that if they don’t observe the Sabbath, which is often described as giving the land rest, their punishment will be exile - they will be forced to leave their homes so that the land can rest. In other words, the land would get its Sabbath one way or another. (for more on this, I recommend the Bible Project series on Seventh Day Rest, or specifically episode 9 in this series, “Rest for the Land”, linked below). And if God cares this much about the land getting rest, how much more does he care about his people getting rest?

During Covid summer, my 20 years of avoiding the Sabbath caught up to me with a vengeance. Before Covid, I was a go-getter, an extrovert, and a girlboss, if you will. Even in my spiritual life I operated with achievement on my mind. But alone in the dark with nothing but a desk lamp to keep me company, I was small and young and I had no choice but to just breathe. I finally stopped driving myself into the ground in that season, and isn’t that what Sabbath is? Stopping for breath?

My family moved in June, and the continued displacement that this brought bared much of my deep-rooted trauma. The peace that my Covid-Sabbath had cultivated seemed to vanish in this season, and I carried this restlessness with me into the new semester.

That fall, I switched my Sabbath to Saturdays, again for selfish reasons. I spent one Sunday afternoon in the library and loved the vibes so much that I decided the Lord could have a full day of my week so long as I got to spend Sunday afternoons in the library with my friends.

Again, the Lord worked my selfishness for my good (Genesis 50:20). Saturday Sabbaths were an integral rhythm in my life for almost two years. This season stretched from the beginning of my junior year in the fall of 2020 to my graduation in the spring of 2022, and it was in this season that the first ripples of the Sabbath’s impact on my life began to show up.

During my junior year, the Lord gave me a family of friends, a whole group of people in pursuit of the heart of the Father in community like I had never dreamed possible. The following summer, I lived alone for the first time. In the quiet of lazy Lynchburg summer days and even in the chaos of working two jobs I learned to lean on the Lord when complete isolation was all that I felt. As I slowed my soul down, I learned to weep at his feet. I went back to counseling. In the fall, I decided not to apply to PhD programs in my field, the first decision I ever made on what felt like blind faith in what I believed to be the Lord’s desire for me. It was in this season that my friend told me during Saturday morning brunch that my vibe was just right for a yoga class, and I laughed but internally thanked the Lord for the peace that drenched my life even in my instability.

Back then, the correlation between these things and my consistent practice of Sabbath would never have been obvious. The Saturday Sabbath years felt like waking up my leg after it had been asleep for hours; it felt like an unremitting seizure in my soul. But, looking back, I can see that a faithful process of change has been evident in my life since I started Sabbathing, and these events were the first unmistakable and significant evidences of the Lord’s blessing born out of my Sabbaths.

Now, I Sabbath on Sundays because I work retail on Saturdays, and I made this switch out of a bit less selfishness this time around :) I’m still in this Sunday Sabbath season, so my reflections are not by any means complete. But I’m re-reading The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, and I can see how, over the last three years, the principles of slowing down, quieting my soul, and seeking the Lord have shaped me into the imperfect, yet more alive version of myself that I am now. And I can confidently say that the Sabbath has been the conduit of much of that change, whether I knew it at the time or not.

If you take anything from this little Sabbath story, let it be this -

Transformation is slow. You will not be transformed into the image of Christ overnight (2 Cor. 3:18). It’s supposed to take a lifetime. This Dallas Willard quote from Hearing God hangs over my bed:

“Do not hurry. Do not dabble in spiritual things. Give time for each stage to play itself out fully in your heart. Remember, this is not something you are doing by yourself. Watch and pray.” (p. 214)

So, take things slow. Do not quit after a week because you don’t see your life flipped on its head yet. You aren’t supposed to. Sitting with the Lord will always be worth it, even if you aren’t able to tell people about it until three years later.

References (because I can’t help it lol)

BibleProject Podcast. (2019, December 2). Rest for the Land. Bible Project. https://bibleproject.com/podcast/rest-land/

Comer, J. M. (2019). The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. Penguin Random House LLC.

Willard, D. (2012). Hearing God. IVP Books.