Explore The Monastic Rhythms That Make for Healthy LeadershipSample

Receiving the Gift that No One Wants

The final practice of the Benedictines is one that gets a lot of lip-service from Christians but little participation: renewal. We like the idea of being renewed so that we can then be more productive, which is the cultural value that drives most of our activity and identity. We already understand that work was a key value for the monastic community, so we know they weren’t slackers. But they also engaged an intentional rhythm of rest and renewal, which speaks to a need most of us carry urgently.

God anticipated this preoccupation with performance and propensity to neglect our long-term health by including something unexpected in the Ten Commandments. Right in there with all the high-profile abuses of morality like murder, stealing, and lying, there is a commandment downright shocking to an agrarian culture: stop working every seventh day! 

There are many ways to practice renewal, and the best ways renew us on multiple levels at once: physically, emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. But perhaps no vehicle of renewal is as essential to our way of being in the world as the Sabbath. A day of rest reins in our inherent bent toward arrogance and self-sufficiency by inviting a most humbling posture, by calling us to relinquish our power for a day and instead honor God as the abundant provider that he truly is. It is an act of profound trust and confident surrender, and when we partake, we are enriched beyond measure. Still, something within us resists it.

Sabbath is the gift that no one wants. Do you? How might you explore the blessings it promises?

Thanks for completing the plan. To go deeper into how the monastic rhythms will make you a better leader, start reading Gravitas: The Monastic Rhythms of Healthy Leadership.