Reading more about and from, as I try to stay within, Sabbath as a daily, even hourly practice these days. Feels needed now more than ever, in our cacophonous times. Here’s a quote I liked this week, from the many great meditations on the subject. For even useful speech comes from rest.

“When we stop, and rest in God, the world and ourselves are made more whole. This is the reason for the commandment of resting in Sabbath often, always even, or especially in times when we are usually meant to be plowing or harvesting, we are commanded to stop and recognize our dependence; it’s for our good to learn to trust, that the universe is not held together by our efforts.

For, Sabbath forms humility. Sabbath like Peace is a place inside of God. It’s a location we need to often visit, in order to know our home, and our own names, and be useful outside of ourselves. Action flows from rest, when best. Apart from Him, we can do no lasting good.” Nice reminder today in study.

Our identities also are found inside the Sabbath space in God. There, we are whispered our names, so that we can whisper to others theirs. So Sabbath is where identity is found and forms.

Sabbath, resting in Our Source, is a very practical need for our times.
Sabbath from our efforts regularly, nurtures, grows and even proves trust.

Trust that if we don’t implement it all ourselves, it will still happen. Sabbath proves trust. It recognizes by our cessation from self effort, that there is something higher which is healing things and keeping them in place. Sabbath is a practice which leads us deeper into trust.

To admit need, is the start of healing. To rest in the Source of healing, is the process of becoming whole. Sabbath is the practice of being sanctified.

This is why we are taught to rest. Sabbath says yes, weekly and daily, I cannot perfect the world by my sheer efforts, I cannot heal myself even. I am meant to tend, but not control; to partner with, but not produce results from self effort (apart from Him, we can do nothing; conversely, to the degree I am in Him, I can do all things! That’s the principle. It presumes we are resting in God, before we act). Being in Sabbath is then a precondition for all healing. And Sabbath reveals our level of trust.

Sabbath is a breath in each week, a crack which lets the light in, into our day, or even each hour, which says we are dependent Partners, we are contingent on something better and higher than us, and that we trust one another. We need, this practice of pause, for The Light to break into us and shine out through us.

From that breath of meeting and communion comes all action. Reality, at least in true christian spirituality, is relationship, in which we rest in the Other, and do only what we see our Friend doing. If we are not at rest, we cannot see. This is the breath all our accomplishments come from. To rest is to return home. “I in You, and you in Me, and them now in us.” As Jesus put it in one of his last prayers for us. We are caught up into that prayer space, into His intimacy with The Father. That’s where Sabbath is located.

Many people are starting to consider Sabbath as the essential practice for our cacophonous times. Finding Sabbath in Him, He who is concerned but never stressed, is a very basic human need now. So, let’s rest into action. In our very restless times, finding daily rest is an essential spiritual practice.

It’s not just to rest from external activities, though that may help facilitate true rest, but it is rather to enter a part of God which is resting in Himself. It is a spiritual act. Perhaps, the most essential sign that we are truly becoming human.