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February 25 - August 5, 2019
“forced Sabbath” has not made me stronger. I have not found rest. A healing of the body is not always a healing of the soul. Thank you for helping me to realize that. And I long for something more—true spiritual rest.
‘A healing of the body is not always a healing of the soul,’
You may not have time for a whole day to rest, but a small window of time here and there cultivates a Sabbath heart. Pausing for prayerful listening, even for just a few minutes, brings everything that is important back into focus. We need whitespace for hearing the truth more clearly.
“Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care that can be inflicted on the sick or well.”
When perspective becomes slanted and days are disoriented—when emotions are out of sorts and your heart feels heavy—rhythms reorient toward what matters most.
A rhythm of preparing for Sabbath, I realize, is similar to practicing for a natural disaster. Instead of being depleted, empty, and anxiety-ridden about what is ahead, I’m experiencing
peace on the inside regularly, not just in calm circumstances.
When we don’t have the forced Sabbath of a snowstorm to slow us down, closing the market translates into turning off the computer, walking away from social networking, and letting go of writing, cooking, and the dishes for twenty-four hours.
“Better to have one handful with quietness than two handfuls with hard work and chasing the wind” (Ecclesiastes 4:6 NLT).
A forced Sabbath can be an unexpected grace—a small portal of escape when life feels big, overwhelming, and interrupted.
“Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met” (Matthew 6:33 MSG).
We’re not taking a day off work for the reward of greater productivity, but a day to remember why we work. Every awakening with breath is a gift. I learned that through my daughter and those with whom I lead in the Sabbath Society.
Our brave yeses pull God’s finger on a divine trigger, unleashing a new season of life together. As clouds transform into rows of giant cotton pulled fresh off the plant, I see an arrow in my mind’s eye and hear this: You are an arrow released from the bow, soaring into the celestial, the sacred, and into a holy moment. “My heart has heard you say, ‘Come and talk with me.’ And my heart responds, ‘Lord, I am coming’” (Psalm 27:8 NLT). As I watch the lone arrow soar, arcing over the clouds, gaining momentum, he assures me that he is at work, orchestrating the pieces of our next chapter, but we
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God is gracious when we doubt him.
Hope and rest are connected.
When we build a rhythm of rest, it is a sign of hope for a weary world.
You and I can be the remnant God uses like Noah, blameless people God looks upon with favor because we listen and trust him. Close fellowship despite living in a busy world tainted by darkness results in a Sabbath heart. God is asking us to build an ark, a safe harbor of rest constructed with hope, a bold proclamation, saving those who are perishing in their own strength.
pointing people toward Hope, a landscape that looks different and better than we can imagine.
Creating rhythms of whitespace in your schedule lets you know the details matter. Friends remind us we are loved when we are afraid of the future.
We are worthy of time set apart for rest because God is worthy of our attention. When life is buzzing all around us, making a day restful lies in the details.
Body, mind, and soul more easily enter true rest when we understand and then accept our worthiness based on who we are, not on what we do.
him? Information helps us to know about God, but Sabbath allows us to encounter him.
It is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration—it
“Mika agrees; you need to rest more than you train, he says,
But what if God’s highest expectation in the journey to a needy culture is engaging the sacrament of presence, being with people because we love them? Is our time with people valuable even if the time can’t be calculated into measured outcomes?
According to my friend Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini, our undivided attention is the most precious resource we can give people in his country.
our poverty isn’t in tangible assets but in our inability t...
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Scholars aren’t unified about the definition, but most agree that Selah means “pause and think about that.”
Sabbath is silence—a faint whisper breaking into a loud and busy world.
A state of inner solitude doesn’t depend on the outside world, the reception of others, or circumstance, and it is most often contagious to those who find anxiety and emotional upheaval the norm of life.
sidelines. It is only the wisdom and perspective gleaned from an hour of silent prayer each morning that prevents me from running for CEO of the universe.10
Have you trained yourself to pause? Do you pay attention to your heart, warning you it’s time to slow down?
Rhythmic pauses help us remember where we are going when life becomes crowded and disorienting.
“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us. Selah”
Rather than allow uncertainty about our future to snuff out the brightness of God’s face shining upon us, I practice Selah during our May adventure in London.
Laughter sounds the same in any language.
restless with insecurity. In the past, I assumed the details of my life falling into place were a result of faith rooted in relationship with Jesus. I had dotted every i with the truth of Scripture and crossed every t with repentance.
Subtly, I had replaced the need for Jesus with the need for certainty. The need for certainty about our future became my idol, and that revelation, my undoing.
God was testing my relationship to him. He was waiting to see if my faith was built with roots in him or what I knew about him.
And I believe he waits in that same posture when we approach Sabbath. Is Sabbath something we do to build deep roots in him or is it what we know about him? Slowly, through surrender and trust, we exchange loneliness for a heart of solitude, fear as a reaction to powerlessness for love as a response of acceptance. In Sabbath, we le...
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Henri Nouwen instructs, “Instead of running away from our loneliness and trying to forget or deny it, we have to protect it and turn it into a fruitful solitude. To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is the movement from the restless senses to the restf...
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I’m not good at spending time in unapologetic playfulness, and this is exactly why I need Sabbath. Brown’s research justifies that there is a similarity between the biological need for play and our body’s need for rest.
Let’s give ourselves permission this week to play for the sheer joy of it and see how it informs our rest.
Get ready. God is about to birth something.
The preferred future of our children, timing in transitions, the security of an address, health, job title, numbers in the bank account—all these details bring a sense of comfort and security with them. But when any one or all of those things become unknowns, we have a choice about letting go of the need for certainty or clinging to methods of self-protection.
Is your gut warning you to slow down and you’re avoiding it because of the fear of what might happen? Can I encourage you to let go and fill up with the peace of God’s goodness?
When we feel unloved, we tend to push, hurry, and hustle. When we feel loved with nothing to prove, we enter rest more easily. In Sabbath, we become our truest self.
One day of rest, which I initially interpreted as a sacrifice, becomes the day to remember how deeply I am loved.
testing. When your only choice is to pray, trust, and accept plunging the knife into the dreams you’ve held tightly, God will provide rescue, a glimmer of hope through a ram in the thicket. We must die to life as we know it for resurrection to take place.
Their preparation was an act of love and their rest an act of faith.
