I’m sitting at the corner table in The Common Cup, the coffee house located in the basement of the church building where our congregation meets. I often sit here in the mornings when my husband, a pastor, preaches two services on a Sunday morning. I like the dedicated time to think, grade papers, or write before I go upstairs for the second service. The baristas brew me an extra strong pot of English Breakfast and I sip on it while I sit listening to quiet worship music and working on whatever is in front of me.
Today, I don’t really have any work. I finished teaching a summer course on Friday. I don’t start teaching again for almost a full month. Yes, I have plans and syllabi to write. Yes, I have grade books to set up. I have plenty of work for the week ahead of me, but today I am resting. I am resting from duties to spend my day blogging, reading, puzzling, and breathing.
I highly recommend it — this kind of resting. I do realize that many of you have determined to observe a Sabbath every week. You regularly take a day to turn away from work to rest for a full day. I mean, it’s Biblical. However, it’s been a difficult concept for me to wrap my brain around. For a long time, the concept of Sabbath felt like an obligation rather than an opportunity. I have felt guilty for not taking a Sabbath rather than thankful to have one.
Perhaps you can relate. My husband and I have long been church workers. Making Sunday a Sabbath is a challenge for church workers. How do you find rest on a day when you have a sermon to preach, lessons to present, needs to respond to, and expectations to meet? Some church workers manage to do it; I’ve never gotten the hang of it.
Or, perhaps your weeks are so full with work and family obligations that taking a full day to rest simply seems impossible. So many of my weekend days have been crammed full of grocery shopping, laundry, house keeping, errand running, and catching up. Some of you manage to do all of those tasks and still find room for a Sabbath rest; again, I haven’t really figured it out.
Even now, when I am no longer working full time, I still struggle to keep a day completely free from ‘work’. I usually slip in a little bit of grading, a little bit of editing, a smidge of house work, or a trip to the grocery store.
However, one thing my chronic illness has taught me is this — our bodies (at least my body) need time to recover, time to heal, time to restore, time to prepare for what is next. If I power through, if I fail to rest, fail to take consistent breaks, my body often shuts itself down and mandates a day or two of bed rest. This has happened over and over again; I am starting to get the message. If I preemptively take a Sabbath, as God’s Word has recommended, then I don’t crash as often.
Not only do our bodies need consistent breaks from work, but also our minds, our spirits, our souls. On Friday, after five weeks of teaching a composition class, I got caught in a rain storm — twice. I was soaked to the skin, but I was determined to run a few errands before I went home. I was tired before I started, but I pressed on. I stopped at four different places before I considered going home. I was hungry. I was exhausted. I was cranky. Instead of taking consistent rest during the five weeks of teaching, I had tutored; I had taken weekend trips; I had pushed myself to my limits. Later Friday night when my husband got home from a business trip, I really wanted to welcome him back, but my fatigued, depleted spirit was edgy. My tone was sharp. My glance was surly.
We expect a lot from ourselves. We push ourselves to do just one more thing — one more email, one more errand, one more social engagement. But guys, what we really need so that we can more fully experience our lives — fully engage with the people in front of us, fully care for the people we love, fully attend to our work — is regular time to recover.
It’s funny, I was writing this post this morning at church. I saw my computer draining of battery, but I thought, I can probably finish before it runs out. I couldn’t. My screen went black, so I had to rest from my blog about resting.
I went to worship. I chatted with friends after. My husband and I stopped at the grocery on the way home. (Insert eye roll here.) We ate some lunch, then I worked on my puzzle while listening to a book on tape.
Since it was time for my afternoon tea, I grabbed my laptop, moved outside to the patio, and sat in my reclining lawn chair to finish my musings. It’s after 4pm and I truly have rested from work most of the day (if you overlook the groceries). My aspirations for the rest of the day? Right now they include staying on this lawn chair a little longer. I haven’t thought beyond that.
I could get used to this.
Leviticus 23:3
“‘There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a day of sabbath rest, a day of sacred assembly. You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a sabbath to the Lord.
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