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The word sanctify has the meaning of betrothal.We
We are not to work on the Sabbath because it takes us out of the play of joy.
Preparation requires that we plan together, dividing tasks and joining together in making our homes a place of anticipation.
Sabbath joy is part mysterious surprise preceded by much planning and preparation. The Sabbath calls us to receive and to create with God the delight he gives and invites us to orchestrate for his glory. It requires surrender and imagination.
The best way to protect the Sabbath is to make well-anticipated plans. The next is to avoid realms that are obvious conduits of distressing or demanding news, such as e-mail, voice mail, even phone calls. Routine tasks, like checking mail, doing laundry, or stopping at a convenience store, often have a way of snowballing into more activity and a turning from the bride.
There is no notion more at odds with the Sabbath than a day of forced quiet, spiritual exercises, and religious devotion and attendance. It implies that the day is meant to be spent indoors, napping or praying, but not partying.
Many mothers view the Sabbath as a setup that isolates them from their peers and care partners (school, day care, baby-sitting, peer play groups) and dumps them with inattentive husbands and cranky kids.
For many husbands, the day is at best a quiet day of reading and watching sports mixed with church and a few down moments before the hectic new workweek starts.
The bind is if one lets the day happen spontaneously, it will usually dissolve into the route of least resistance, often turning out to be what Eugene Peterson refers to as a “bastard Sabbath.”
The bind is only resolvable with clarity as to why the Sabbath is about relationship, nature, and beauty. And even then, it still requires a strong push to embrace beauty.
The Sabbath is a day when we enter a dance with God and others and experience a beauty that takes our breath away.
Beauty is not under our control and mastery—we cannot easily define it and own it. But when we encounter it, we are its servant.
We can approach beauty only through awe. Awe enables us to be both humbled and bold.
How could Jesus be both fully human and fully God? The incarnation gives us a window into mystery that prompts us to see all of life differently, even if we comprehend little of what we see.
Which is worse: being highly attached to the arousal of our senses, or being so detached that nothing but megadoses of arousal even slightly awaken us?
Jesus is the presence of superabundance. The Sabbath is the weekly entry into a taste of lavish, sensuous delight.
Jesus’ way of being with others was a feast ethic. All meals, and all joy around a table, are a reminder of the feast of the coming kingdom.
What if the Sabbath is creating space to hear the Father speak to us as his beloved as he serves us as the Host? This day is ours, given to us by the Trinity for our entry into the wild wonder of Jesus’ love for us.
The Sabbath is our play day—not as a break from the routine of work, but as a feast that celebrates the superabundance of God’s creative love to give glory for no other reason other than Love himself loves to create and give away glory.
Sabbath is not a break from work; it is a redefinition of how we work, why we work, and how we create freedom through our work.
Sabbath is about the blessing of creativity, the making of something new that is full of surprise and glory that will bless through the lavish, free, and playful kindness of God. For that reason, one cannot understand Sabbath unless the concept of play is given a strong and compelling voice.
the goal, even if the supposed end point is winning, is to intensify pleasure by trying out new ways of doing the game
Even in the nonhuman kingdom, play is part of the creational mandate. Diane Ackerman says, “The more an animal needs to learn in order to survive, the more it needs to play.”
The Sabbath creates equality between male and female, slave and free, alien and aristocracy because we all were once slaves and have been set free by the recreational goodness of God.
freedom scares us. We demand freedom, yet we fear the risk required to recreate in a manner that has such openness, vulnerability, and potential for failure.
If the Sabbath is the height of play, then the distance to fall will be immense. There is meant to be more risk and danger on the Sabbath than any other day. It is the risk of playing with God communally amid his creation, aroused by sensuality, and open to the terrifying presence of the Trinity.
Heresy is so dangerous not because it is ridiculously false, but because it is deceptively almost true.
Belden Lane offers a terrifying and thrilling proposition: perhaps God is truly playful. When we experience God’s absence, perhaps God is “like a mother playfully hiding from her child or a lover playing hard to get, God hides from those God loves, occasionally playing rough for love’s sake. The purpose of God’s apparent absence, of God’s hiding, is to deepen in the lover a longing for the one loved, to enhance the joy experienced when fear dissolves and the separated are rejoined.”
It is the mystery of all deep play. To enter the realm of play, we must give ourselves to something or someone and turn away from all else. It is both a pledge and a betrayal.
Playing is failing—at least failing so many times that we succeed only by the gift of grit and desire that is the real point of all play.
My mentor returned to watch the display unfold. He was as stunned as I and far, far more delighted than I had the capacity to feel in the moment. The joy on his face was more captivating than the glory in the water. It took many years for me to comprehend, but the first fish my father-in-law caught on a small stream in Montana was as exciting to me as any fish I have ever caught.
nothing has been as moving for me as being part of another person’s joy.
The deepest delight is to participate with another in a delight that we have had a small hand in bringing to pass.
Regeneration requires giving away for new growth to spring forth. It is the Sabbath way.
Sabbath doesn’t deny that death exists; instead, it celebrates life. It pretends that death has no power to contort joy or to disfigure love.
