Sabbath is not honored through shame or guilt. Put simply, shame is work—tedious work to be exact. Shame and rest are mutually exclusive realities.14 If Sabbath becomes about heaping shame on anyone else, then we have failed to practice the rich grace of the Sabbath. If we feel shameful about keeping a Sabbath, we are not understanding it properly. Nor will coercion ever lead to authentic rest. To be clearer, it is guilt that so often motivates us to work eighty hours a week and produce like we work for Pharaoh. Guilt does not motivate us to rest. Life does. As the old saying goes: never teach
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