Jeremiah 31:25 “I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint.”
In this strange year of 2020, some of us have piled up unused vacation days that we’re trying to squeeze in before the year ends. We feel the pressure of looming deadlines and as-yet-unfinished projects, so it’s tempting to just plow into work even if it means losing earned vacation time or, when taking time off, to fret about the job and furtively check messages hour by hour. Where I work the vacation rate was so low compared to previous years that employees entered a raffle for valuable prizes simply by using some of their vacation days during the summer. (Yes, I work at a remarkable company.)
Last week I noted that Advent is a blessed way to measure time leading up to Christmas. It is time invested with family and fellow believers and maybe even an unexpected stranger passing through. It’s also a reminder to slow down and reflect, to take a breath, to marvel at God and his ways.
Pausing to celebrate Advent makes me think of the Bible’s many references to Sabbath rest. In his book, The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel writes about the preeminence of one day per week as taught in the Ten Commandments. But God doesn’t stop there, instructing Moses about an astonishing full year of rest called the Year of Jubilee. And the verse opening this post is God’s promise to give his people rest upon freeing them from exile. Scripture repeatedly teaches that God is pleased when his followers take time to rest and be refreshed by him.
Father, this has been an exceptionally difficult year for many, especially those with too much time due to loss of employment and draining resources. Whether over- or under-worked, please help your people plan for times of rest. And when we rest, help us to not waste the time, but to turn our attention more fully to you and to those you’ve placed around us.
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This week: Below are some of my favorite quotes from Heschel’s The Sabbath. I include them here to prompt your thinking about this important topic of God-given rest.
Most of us seem to labor for the sake of things of space. As a result we suffer from a deeply rooted dread of time and stand aghast when compelled to look into its face. Time to us is a sarcasm, a slick treacherous monster with a jaw like a furnace incinerating every moment of our lives.
The Sabbath is … an opportunity to mend our tattered lives; To collect rather than to dissipate time.
This, then, is the answer to the problem of civilization: not to flee from the realm of space; to work with things of space but to be in love with eternity.
The Sabbath is the counterpoint of living; the melody sustained throughout all agitations and vicissitudes which menace our conscience; our awareness of God’s presence in the world.
There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things.
We can only solve the problem of time through sanctification of time. To men alone time is elusive; to men with God time is eternity in disguise. … This is the task of men: to conquer space and sanctify time.
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