Sabbath

This past week, Jill and I (along with my parents, sister, and her family) spent a week relaxing (hiking, biking, reading, game playing) in the mountains. It was good. The week away reminded me of the wisdom of stepping away from our labors and practicing regular sabbath rest. Here's a few quotes Eugene Peterson's book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, that clarify why:

• “Sabbath is a workshop for the practice of eternity.” (110)
• “Sabbath is a deliberate act of interference, an interruption of our work each week, a decree of no-work so that we are able to notice, to attend, to listen, to assimilate this comprehensive and majestic work of God, to orient our work in the work of God” (110)
• “Un-sabbathed, our work becomes the entire context in which we define our lives. We lose God-consciousness, God-awareness, sightings of resurrection. We lose the capacity to sing “This is my Father’s world” and end up chirping little self-centered ditties about what we are doing and feeling.” (117)
• “Sabbath keeping is a publicly enacted sign of our trust that God keeps the world, therefore we do not have to. God welcomes our labors, but our contributions to the world have their limits. If even God trusted creation enough to be confident that the world would continue while God rested, so should we.” (Quoting William Willimon, p. 129)