Sacred Strides: Sabbath as a Command, a Practice, and a GiftSample

DAY 5: The Sabbath Shows Us Our Belovedness

For years, I believed wholeness and spiritual fulfillment were available to me only if I could ignore or even reject my love of work. Instead, the practice of rest has sanctified and clarified my work life.

God’s invitation isn’t: Work hard and take a break when you need one. His invitation was Join me in this way of living and let your life be shaped like mine so that you can experience wholeness, holiness, and blessedness the way I designed.

A regular Sabbath means having enough rest often enough that it affects (and infects) the days around it. I’m not just breaking from work; I’m intentionally touching base with God, the Source of my Belovedness, so I can learn to see and experience that same sense of wholeness throughout my life. Finding joy and life in my every day begins with recognizing joy and life, to begin with. The regularity of a weekly Sabbath trains my eye to see that way right where I am.

I naturally prefer working. I gravitate toward action and making things. For that reason, I consider resting the most vital aspect of my journey up to this point, largely because rest has helped me learn to know I am Beloved in and through my work and not as a reward for it!

When I give the best of myself to the work I’ve chosen, I profess that I have seen something so deeply good and beautiful and true of God that I respond by offering the best of my time and energy. Not because there’s a bottom line I want to add to but because I want to share in and be part of God’s love for the world. What I long to profess in and through my work is that I am drawn into the Story of God by the Love of God.

Respond

How do you sense God drawing you to His Love through a Sabbath practice? What do you believe the writer of Hebrews meant by “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God”?