I had a nagging hunch that something was missing. I noticed how focused I could be on trying to experience God in the future that I failed to notice God in the present. In the midst of doing too much, not seemingly doing anything very well, wondering where it any of it was going or if it had any impact, I had an epiphany of sorts. It had to do with a new understanding of something that has been with us from the very beginning, but which we ignore more than anything else: sabbath. A gift, invitation, commandment God spends more time developing than any other. Perhaps one of the most important things God invites us to remember and rediscover, especially in these days of fear, anxiety, fractures, and conflict.

It seems that God knew from the start the human propensity to be ruled by hurry, production, competition, busyness and, consequently, deprived of enjoyment and delight. It is even said that exhaustion is the number one enemy of spiritual formation. I have felt that way too often. And I remember that God offers a different rhythm with endless beginnings. From when God celebrated creation with joy and fulfillment by resting, to a new status of dignity given to the wilderness wandering Israelites via the sabbath command, to the prophetic pleas to delight in God’s sabbath kindness, to the restoration Jesus freely extended as the embodiment of true rest, sabbath has always been a source of intimacy and formation. And in customary fashion, humanity (myself included) took a brilliant gift from God and screwed it up by making up all sorts of rules about how to use this gift, or just ignoring the gift altogether. Yet most of the things we need to be most fully alive never come in busyness, but instead grow in rest.

So here we are living in an age of fear, conflict, anxiety, and loneliness. We are scarred by hatred and violence, and desperately longing for beauty. And God’s invitation holds steady: to excavate the concept of sabbath from an archaic or inconvenient idea, and embrace it as a life-giving, life-restoring practice we can’t afford to keep ignoring. I am (re)learning that when I keep/remember sabbath – usually in very small and partial ways – sabbath actually keeps me. I find the God who has been keeping all of us all along, calling us to remember our belovedness, and whose heart and purposes plunges us more deeply into the sacred work of restoration in the world.

I readily admit that I still kind of suck at fully embracing sabbath, but I do delight in the ongoing journey of remembering deeply that it is a divine gift essential to my full humanity and faith…and a sacred ingredient in reconciliation to God, to creation, to myself, and to one another.