Earlier this year, around 'end-of-the-school-year' time, I began noticing post after post in which my Facebook friends were talking about how exhausted they were - how tired and how busy. My one Facebook friend posted “I’m physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted. I’m so tired my tired is tired.” At the time, I was a 9-months-pregnant graduate student with two jobs, so my initial thought was "if anyone is exhausted here, Facebook friends, it's me!" But if we’re being honest, so many of us can relate to the feeling of an exhaustion so overwhelming that we can say 'our tired is tired!'
But there are different kinds of tired, aren’t there? Like my friend posted, there’s physically tired, when your body hasn’t had proper rest, but there’s also being emotionally tired and being spiritually tired – which no one really talks about.
There’s a kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix.
I’ve been there – and maybe you're there. This is not just a problem among my Facebook friends, or in my town, or in your house – it’s a problem everywhere. Growing levels of anxiety, depression, suicide, general tiredness and busyness – how is everyone single person I know overworked and pressed for time?
Whatever the reason, I don’t think being perpetually tired lines up with the life God calls His people to live. I don’t think it describes the life of Jesus. I don’t think busy is a fruit of the Spirit. It don't think it has to be this way. There is a different way to live.
If you asked me what I think one of the biggest helps to the church could be in 2022 (you didn't, but I'll tell you anyway), I would probably give all the normal-spiritual-habit-answers like prayer, and meditating on Scripture, and worship, and those are all very important things. However, there is one spiritual habit that God’s people have totally and completely neglected in modern history (and it’s only getting worse): the lost habit called Sabbath.
The word Sabbath in biblical and Jewish history is known as a noun - a day to rest. The word can also be a verb that literally means ‘to cease,' or to stop. This idea is seen on the very first pages of Genesis, when God is creating everything – the very fabric of time and space and earth and day and night - and He just stops creating for a day in order to rest. I'm sure you know the story. God rests. ....really? Why? He’s God, after all. He’s not tired. So why would you rest if you’re not tired? I don't know everything, but here's a thought: maybe God is a God who simply delights in his creation...so much so that He would set aside a whole day to just do that. Maybe God wanted Adam and Eve’s first day of living to just be spent with Him – just doing nothing with God, just experiencing him and enjoying his creation – no work, no stress, just being. Maybe God is setting a precedent for His people to follow. Sabbath rest is quite literally written into the rhythm of time as we know it. John Mark Comer puts it this way to put Sabbath in perspective: if someone came up to you and offered you the incredible gift of one extra day a week (so now every week was 8 days long), would you not take it?!
The only caveat is you can only have the day if you didn’t work. On that day, you have to stop, slow down, just be, play, enjoy people, be with God, eat a good meal, and do something that fills your soul. Would you still take the extra day? Of course! Here’s the thing – God already did that for us! We already gave us an extra day every week for that exact thing – stopping and resting. He knew that we would need it. The problem is that we largely ignore this gift we’ve been given, well, because – we don’t get it. It doesn’t compute. Many of us don’t know how to rest and we don’t know how to stop. After so many centuries of not resting, we get further and further away from God’s original design - and it’s no wonder our society is having one cohesive mental breakdown. Sabbath is written into God’s universe, and whether you want to recognize it or not, it’ll catch up to your body and mind and spirit eventually. Sabbath is first commanded by God in Exodus 31 – this is what He says about it: “Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘You must observe my Sabbath. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.”
God was pretty serious about this Sabbath stuff. He declares to Moses that this will be a sign, a defining marker of His people - that they will know how to stop and rest and take a day to just be with God and remember their Creator.
This is so important to God that it becomes one of the Ten Commandments (#4, right there next to 'don't lie' and 'don't kill'), which, we would all probably agree, are moral laws that stand the test of time and still very much apply for God’s people today.
So the question for us then is why don’t we care? Why isn’t it important to us? I could probably count on my hands the number of people I know who actually practice Sabbath-ing. Why is that?
One explanation is that in the New Testament, Jesus challenged how the Sabbath was practiced a few times. The Sabbath day was a big deal to the religious leaders, because it was a day they could use to trap people; they had all kinds of ridiculous man-made laws about the Sabbath day. A day that was supposed to be about resting and enjoying God and His creation had been turned into a day where the leaders were able to just further oppress and ridicule people.
Jesus “got in trouble” with the leaders a few times for healing on the Sabbath, picking grain on the Sabbath, etc. (Mark 2-3). Because of those instances and how much Jesus challenged the religious leaders on Sabbath day practices, perhaps it has made some people assume that the Sabbath isn’t such a big deal after all - that the commandment has been revoked or tweaked or condemned or something. But actually, I think what Jesus was challenging was the religious tradition of keeping the Sabbath without any heart or reason behind it.
Jesus took all of God's commandments to the next level. He taught us that the commandments of God are actually all about the heart, not just blindly following the letter of the law. The Sabbath was not intended to be some rigid day of laws to be followed to the letter, God made it for us. God knew how much we would desperately need a day to just cease, to stop striving, to just be, to just rest, and to just remember Him.
To really boil it down: the heart of the Sabbath is to remind us that WE ARE NOT GOD.
We are human. There’s something really freeing about accepting that. You are not in control. You never were, and you never will be.
When the Sabbath is first mentioned in Exodus 31, God was trying to help Israel adjust to a new life - a life where they weren’t slaves. After all, they had been slaves for more than 400 years – and they didn’t know how to not be slaves. It was ingrained in them.
I've realized that slavery is ingrained in us too. It has been from day 1. We’re willingly slaves to our work, to bitterness, to fear, and to being constantly sick and tired. Can we wake up to the realization that God is always ever drawing us to him, out of slavery to our old selves and to sin and to perpetual tiredness? Can we wake up to realize that He is ever drawing us into a life that is actually full of peace and rest and joy and new identity in Jesus?
What if, in 2022, Sabbath could be something we could start to practice to help us grow in our faith journey with Jesus and in our new identity as people who depend on God? What if being perpetually exhausted isn't God's will for your life?
God’s will for your life is relationship with His Son, Jesus, who, actually, if we want to get really theologically deep – is Sabbath rest to us. Jesus is the fulfillment of all the commandments, right? And He is the Lord of the Sabbath. Our souls aren’t at rest until they find rest in Jesus. Under the Old Covenant, Israel had one day to foreshadow what it might be like to live life united always to the One who is the embodiment of rest. The whole Old Testament points to Jesus, which is why these words in Matthew 11 (famous words that we like to sew on pillows) mean something so powerful to someone who understands the point of the Sabbath:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-29) Today, Jesus is our Sabbath. It doesn't have to be just a day now - it’s anytime, anywhere. We can tap into this rest and peace that the whole Old Testament idea of Sabbath has been pointing toward.
Here are three practical suggestions for including the idea of Sabbath in 2022, which I truly believe could change everything for you, like it has for me.
1. Learn how to cease/stop/Sabbath and practice it in rhythms that work for you. Maybe that looks like twice a day, stop for 15 minutes. Once a week, cease for a whole day (this takes planning, obviously!). Once a month, stop for a few days in a row. Once a year, stop for a whole week.
2. What does it mean to stop? I don’t think it means you sit like a bump on a log and watch TV all day. It could, but that never actually fills me up. I think it really means taking time to actively do things that fill up your soul. Do you feel filled after being alone or connecting in relationships? If you love painting, then paint, or if you love cooking, then cook! Find ways to involve your kids or family. Disconnect from everything that tells you to compare, to work, or to keep striving. I turn off my phone for 24 hours every week.
3. Connect with God – pray, worship, connect with God in nature, read your Bible, watch a sermon, talk to God. Jesus brings true soul rest, and He is our Sabbath.
I pray that my friends near and far would know that real, true rest is found only in the person and practices of Jesus. If you’re tired today, and looking for a way to experience a 'new you' in the new year, I’d encourage you to look into what it might mean to practice observing a Sabbath in your family and see what it does for you.
But true Sabbath rest is only found in the person and presence of Jesus Christ – He is inviting you into that rest today and everyday. Amen.
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