When was the last time you stopped being so busy and spent some time resting?
In today’s culture, that sounds ridiculous.
We have a to-do list a mile long. We complain about everything we have to do to anyone who will listen. And if nobody’s around to listen, we put it on Facebook. We wear being busy as a badge of honor to show the world how important we are. The more we jam into our schedules, the better we feel about ourselves. And the more activities we enroll our kids in, the better off they’ll be, we say.
My family just got back from vacation at a resort here in Orlando, Florida. We spent our days swimming, endlessly going down water slides, and playing games at the arcade. We had a blast.
It was great to call a timeout on the busyness of life and just get away for a few days.
But you don’t have to spend money and go away to give yourself the gift of rest.
There’s a word I haven’t been able to get out of my mind for some time now. The word is Sabbath.
Sabbath literally means stop. It’s derived from the Hebrew word sabat. It’s most commonly known and used in reference to the Bible, where God rested on the seventh day – the Sabbath – following the six days of creation. Many still observe the Sabbath today, dedicating a day each week to rest.
God thought the Sabbath was so important that He included it in the 10 commandments. It’s number four. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work.”
How many of us actually observe a Sabbath? How many of us stop working one day each week?
What makes a Sabbath is simple… it’s just the absence of work. So what is considered work? Doing anything you consider a chore is work. So if cooking is a chore for you, it should be avoided. But if you love cooking, then it’s not a chore and isn’t something to be avoided on the Sabbath. (Side note: I predict after reading this, my wife will suggest we order a pizza for dinner tonight.)
Besides the obvious chores around the house, observing the Sabbath means no logging into work. It means no pulling out the company BlackBerry just to check email. It also means no worrying.
My favorite book so far this year is Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. A few insights I gained from the book that can also apply to a weekly Sabbath are:
-By abolishing any chance of being bored, we lost the time we used to have to think and process.
-The busier things get, the more we need to build in thinking time into our schedule.
-Play is an antidote to stress.
-Essentialists see sleep as necessary for operating at high levels of contribution.
-Build sleep into your schedule so you can do more, achieve more, and explore more.
-Essentialists do one fewer thing right now in order to do more tomorrow.
While all of these nuggets of wisdom relate to a weekly Sabbath, the last one really speaks to me.
We all have a never-ending to-do list and it would seem crazy to put it off for a day so we can rest. We worry that we’ll get farther behind on our chores and all of the things we have to get done. The paradox is that by choosing to do fewer things today, we can be even more productive tomorrow.
Spend some time today planning to observe the Sabbath tomorrow. Give yourself the gift of rest.