The Rest of God Quotes

“J. R. R. Tolkien gives one of the most entrancing descriptions of the true nature of Sabbath. In book 1 of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he describes a time of rest and healing in the house of Elrond in Rivendell. The hobbits, along with Strider, their guide, have made a dangerous, almost fatal journey to this place. They will soon have to make an even more dangerous, almost certainly fatal journey away from this place. But in the meantime, this: For awhile the hobbits continued to talk and think of the past journey and of the perils that lay ahead; but such was the virtue of the land of Rivendell that soon all fear and anxiety was lifted from their minds. The future, good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have power over the present. Health and hope grew strong in them, and they were content with each day as it came, taking pleasure in every meal, and in every word and song.2 The future, good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have power over the present. That’s Sabbath.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“In a culture where busyness is a fetish and stillness is laziness, rest is sloth. But without rest, we miss the rest of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply. “Be still, and know that I am God.” Some knowing is never pursued, only received. And for that, you need to be still. Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness. It is both time on a calendar and a disposition of the heart. It is a day we enter, but just as much a way we see. Sabbath imparts the rest of God—actual physical, mental, spiritual rest, but also the rest of God— the things of God’s nature and presence we miss in our busyness.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“The examen is a form of personal inventory. At day’s end, spend time in prayerful reflection on your day: your comings and goings, routines and disruptions, work and play, discoveries and disappointments. Think about who you met, or missed. Think about your moments of aloneness. In all, ask two questions: when was I most alive, most present, most filled and fulfilled today? And when was I most taxed, stressed, distracted, depleted today? A simpler, and more spiritually focused, version of those questions: when did I feel closest to God, and when farthest?”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“One measure for whether or not you’re rested enough—besides falling asleep in board meetings—is to ask yourself this: How much do I care about the things I care about? When we lose concern for people, both the lost and the found, for the bride of Christ, for friendship, for truth and beauty and goodness; when we cease to laugh when our children laugh (and instead yell at them to quiet down) or weep when our spouses weep (and instead wish they didn’t get so emotional); when we hear news of trouble among our neighbors and our first thought is that we hope it isn’t going to involve us—when we stop caring about the things we care about—that’s a signal we’re too busy. We have let ourselves be consumed by the things that feed the ego but starve the soul. Busyness kills the heart.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“Sabbath-keeping requires two orientations. One is Godward. The other is timeward. To keep Sabbath well—as both a day and an attitude—we have to think clearly about God and freshly about time. We likely, at some level, need to change our minds about both. Unless we trust God’s sovereignty, we won’t dare risk Sabbath. And unless we receive time as abundance and gift, not as ration and burden, we’ll never develop a capacity to savor Sabbath.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“without rest, we miss the rest of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply. “Be still, and know that I am God.” Some knowing is never pursued, only received. And for that, you need to be still.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“Sabbath is that one day. It is a reprieve from what you ought to do, even though the list of oughts is infinitely long and never done. Oughts are tyrants, noisy and surly, chronically dissatisfied. Sabbath is the day you trade places with them: they go in the salt mine, and you go out dancing. It’s the one day when the only thing you must do is to not do the things you must. You are given permission— issued a command, to be blunt—to turn your back on all those oughts. You get to willfully ignore the many niggling things your existence genuinely depends on—and is often hobbled beneath—so that you can turn to whatever you’ve put off and pushed away for lack of time, lack of room, lack of breath. You get to shuck the have-tos and lay hold of the get-tos.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“The opposite of a slave is not a free man. It’s a worshiper. The one who is most free is the one who turns the work of his hands into sacrament, into offering. All he makes and all he does are gifts from God, through God, and to God.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“The secret impetus behind legalism is its competitiveness. The point is not just to win: it’s to beat everyone else.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“I was in no hurry. I prayed. I sang. I listened. I watched. In all that time, I never earned a cent. I didn't write a word. I didn't build a thing. The world is no richer for my passing through it. But I'm far richer for not missing it.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“But what we find is that flight becomes captivity: once we begin to flee the things that threaten and burden us, there is no end to fleeing.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“In some ways, the whole point of the Exodus was Sabbath. Let my people go, became God’s rallying cry, that they might worship me. At the heart of liberty—of being let go—is worship. But at the heart of worship is rest—a stopping from all work, all worry, all scheming, all fleeing—to stand amazed and thankful before God and his work. There can be no real worship without true rest.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“The span between life as we intend it and life as we receive it is vast. Our true purpose is worked out in that gap. It is fashioned in the crucible of interruptions.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“The root idea of Sabbath is simple as rain falling, basic as breathing. It’s that all living things—and many nonliving things too— thrive only by an ample measure of stillness.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“One of the largest obstacles to true Sabbath-keeping is leisure. It is what cultural historian Witold Rybczynski calls “waiting for the weekend,” where we see work as only an extended interlude between our real lives. Leisure is what Sabbath becomes when we no longer know how to sanctify time. Leisure is Sabbath bereft of the sacred. It is a vacation—literally, a vacating, an evacuation. As Rybczynski sees it, leisure has become despotic in our age, enslaving us and exhausting us, demanding from us more than it gives.2”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath

“In a culture where busyness is a fetish and stillness is laziness, rest is sloth. But without rest, we miss the rest of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply.”
― Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath