Subversive Sabbath Quotes

“That God rested on the seventh day, and blessed and sanctified it, is the first divine action which man is privileged to witness; and that he himself may keep the Sabbath with God, completely free from work, is the first Word spoken to him, the first obligation laid on him.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“The result of our Sabbath amnesia is that we have become perhaps the most emotionally exhausted, psychologically overworked, spiritually malnourished people in history.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“Sabbath goes against the very structure and system of the world we have constructed. Sabbath, then, becomes a kind of resistance to that world.3 Such resistance must be characterized”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“When all is said and done, the worst thing that has happened to the Sabbath is religion. Religion is hostile to gifts. Religion hates free stuff. Religion squanders the good gifts of God by trying to earn them, which is why we will never really enjoy a sacred day of rest as long as we think our religion is all about earning.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“We fall into the same trap time and again—not knowing how to enjoy a gift from God.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“The Sabbath is a gift we do not know how to receive. In a world of doing, going, and producing, we have no use for a gift that invites us to stop. But that is the original gift: a gift of rest.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“more critical than a gift is how we handle the gift.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the scratch of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“While sometimes our witness demands that we find people of peace, other times our ministry and evangelism to the world starts as we become people of peace—calm, hopeful, peaceful, not neurotic. There is a kind of quality to that person, to the person who has a deep, abiding sense of peace. I want to look for a few moments at how the Sabbath actually creates a church at peace, which can draw in the world.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“I have become entirely convinced that in the twenty-first century the gospel of Jesus—again, particularly within the Western world—has great power to speak to the needs of an increasingly tired, exhausted, and boundaryless society that finds its value in doing. In short, the Sabbath is a unique witness to the gospel in the twenty-first century; the Sabbath will play a key role in the church’s evangelism to the world in our day.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“The life of Jesus, it turns out, brings full circle the Sabbath rest of God in creation. God rested on the seventh day when he created the world. Likewise, Jesus, as he re-created the world through his death and resurrection, rested on the seventh day—Holy Saturday. There, in a holy, borrowed grave, Jesus rested as his Father did at creation.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“I have had to come to terms with the reality that what is restful for me is not always what is most restful for my wife. And that difference is sacred.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“The Triune God—Father, Son, and Spirit—is not the relationship of three beings who at some point became friends and brought their powers together to create the world. The Triune Godhead is coeternal. God is, in himself, relational.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“Jesus desires that we say yes to following him, and as we do, a primary aspect of discipleship is learning how to say yes and no to the things of this world. Disciples have boundaries.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“My gut tells me that you will not be able to stop. In a decade of Sabbath-keeping, I have never met someone who used to Sabbath. Nor have I met someone who wished they had kept fewer Sabbaths. Once you start, you probably won’t stop. It is profoundly life giving.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“Practically, how can you begin if you find yourself in a challenging situation? Do this: begin with a half-day Sabbath. Just half a day. Turn your phone off. Make some pancakes. Go on a walk. Pray. Pull out your journal. Read a psalm out loud. God will meet you. And as you enter into the Sabbath rest that God eternally beckons you into, you will find that your heart is being slowly transformed. You may just find yourself hooked. God will provide in some way. Never forget all the “booty stories” in the Bible. Every time God sends his people on a journey—be it through the desert, on the way to the promised land, as disciples with Jesus—he provides for them in unique and special ways. As Israel leaves Egypt to enter the journey to freedom, they receive riches and provisions (booty) from the Egyptians as they leave. They never went on a journey without provision. That is the God we follow. He sends us into the desert with a provision of rest.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“A person who leads a meaningful life does not need the excessive burdening flow of information.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“The powerful lesson is that God remains at work on the Sabbath—in us.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“As for my work, studies continue to reveal that pastoral burnout is connected to the pastor’s sense of being and worthiness.21 I became a workaholic chiefly because I had not allowed the grace of Jesus to reside in the depths of the caverns of my soul. I even used to think the Sabbath was a break from ministry. Now I see Sabbath as ministry. It frees people. It helps others in the church. It establishes boundaries. And, above all, it proclaims the good news of Jesus. As I read Peterson, one question came back to me over and over again: How can I preach salvation by grace when my life is built on an altar of workaholism?”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“Six days a week the spirit is alone, disregarded, forsaken, forgotten. Working under strain, beset with worries, enmeshed in anxieties, man has no mind for ethereal beauty. But the spirit is waiting for man to join in. Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“QUESTIONS
for Reflection How might Sabbath be a way of resisting the instinct to worship work? Can you identify areas of your own life where work or achievement have served either as a numbing agent or as what provided your identity? How might your work be driven by either fear or purpose? Why did God give the law of Sabbath rest? What do you think about rest being a way to worship God? How might admitting your own needs allow you to care for the needs of your community? What needs of yours are currently unmet? What are the rhythms of your life saying to the world around you? Do they indicate that you serve a God of grace or that you serve at the altar of workaholism? Have you experienced a time when God did the seemingly impossible when you entrusted something to him (like God stretching time)?”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“became a workaholic chiefly because I had not allowed the grace of Jesus to reside in the depths of the caverns of my soul. I even used to think the Sabbath was a break from ministry. Now I see Sabbath as ministry. It frees people. It helps others in the church. It establishes boundaries. And, above all, it proclaims the good news of Jesus. As I read Peterson, one question came back to me over and over again: How can I preach salvation by grace when my life is built on an altar of workaholism?”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“Christ. The silence of the Sabbath allows our mind time to kick up its feet and rest. Such a move may seem contrary to our idolatry of distraction. But in that silence we will find a kind of freedom that gives us space to apply our minds to the goodness and glories of the living God.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“Henri Nouwen once suggested: “We aren’t rest-filled people who occasionally become restless. We are restless people who sometimes find rest.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“What defines work? And rest? Our hearts. Are we entering into trust and love and peace and goodness? Are we being thankful? Can we be still? Sabbath invites us into the freedom of God’s love. Hear the psalmist’s invitation: “It is good to praise the LORD, and make music to your name, O Most High” (Ps. 92:1).”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“Mark Buchanan brilliantly touches on this: The rest of God—the rest God gladly gives so that we might discover that part of God we’re missing—is not a reward for finishing. It’s not a bonus for work well done. It’s sheer gift. It is a stop-work order in the midst of work that’s never complete, never polished. Sabbath is not the break we’re allotted at the tail end of completing all our tasks and chores, the fulfillment of all our obligations. It’s the rest we take smack-dab in the middle of them, without apology, without guilt, and for no better reason than God told us we could.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“omnipresent, neither of which God desired for me to be. As I read the Gospels, it became clearer and clearer to me that Jesus himself was not selfless. Jesus went into the mountains and prayed to the point that even his disciples could not find him. Jesus ate. Jesus drank. Jesus slept. He took care of himself. And never once was Jesus hurried from place to place, controlled by a busy schedule. Jesus lived a rhythm completely different from anyone around him. The rhythm of his life was, in itself, a prophetic act against the rhythms of the world. Sabbath rhythms are not meant for paper; they are meant to be practiced. “Holy days, rituals, liturgies—all are like musical notations which, in themselves,” one Jewish scholar writes, “cannot convey the nuances and textures of live performance.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“Matthew Henry in his Commentary on the Whole Bible writes, “The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.”11”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“At the heart of the human vocation is to be with God, not to do anything.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World

“Schaper: “Sabbath keeping is a spiritual strategy: it is a kind of judo. The world’s commands are heavy; we respond with light moves. The world says work; we play. The world says go fast; we go slow. These light moves carry Sabbath into our days, and God into our lives.”
― A.J. Swoboda, Subversive Sabbath: The Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World