The Sabbath Experiment
10 September 2010
So this Sunday, my husband and I will be taking our first official Sabbath.
The idea of keeping Sabbath – a day of rest – is a subject that’s continued to pop up all around me for a couple years now. And then last Sunday, it popped up in the sermon at church and my husband and I decided it was worth a shot.
We went round and round about it for about 30 minutes. At times I felt like Ben was the one arguing against it, and other times it felt like I was.
The way our weekends look now are typically Friday nights off, and then Saturday and Sunday are a mix of hanging out and crossing things off our to-do lists. So the question that kept coming up for us was “Is it worth Saturday being absolutely crazy to be able to take off all of Sunday?” Like is there some sort of special ingredient in having an entire day off versus spreading leisure time over a couple of days?
I feel very divided on this. Part of me does the whole, “It was a different time back when God set up the Sabbath. Employers didn’t recognize the weekend the way they do now.” And part of me – albeit a dumb part – feels like people back then just weren’t as busy as I am now. Sure, they had to hunt for their own food, but I have a blog to run!
The other part of me thinks of when Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Click here for context.)
If God is trying to hand me a day of rest, why do I keep fighting Him on it? It’s quite possible that I need that day of rest more than I need to wipe the spots of the bathroom mirror.
Do you take a Sabbath? Why or why not?
Belonging to a Sabbath-keeping denomination as I do, this is a subject that comes up every time someone visits and thereby asks, “So why do you guys keep the Sabbath?” LOL.
First, there are studies that prove that if you take a full day of rest, you accomplish more in the rest of the week. Scientific fact. Second, even the LAND needs a sabbath, hence why God instigated crop rotation and fallow time way before modern farmers scratched their heads, did the math, and realized the fields yielded more crops if they had the seventh year off.
Is keeping the Sabbath hard? Sometimes—but not often. I’ve found that when you truly try to keep the day holy, not only by not working, but on reflecting on WHY you’re not working, it really does provide you with a wonderful, restful day that leaves you geared up and ready to start the week anew.
Posted by Roseanna White on 10 September 2010