This past Fourth of July weekend was an opportunity for me to practice Sabbath.  And I did, sort of.  I guess I'm still trying to get the hang of it.  I'm the kind of person who likes to be busy.  On the weekends, I like to have a plan - "Today we are going to do yard work, and run errands, and then meet our friends for dinner."  And I'm realizing that having a scheduled day off like this isn't all that different than having a normal workday schedule.  The tasks are just different.  A to-do list filled day off isn't the same thing as Sabbath.

In his book, Allender addresses this when he critiques other books that make the Sabbath out to be a day to rest and recharge.  Recharge for what?  Recharge so we can get back to work, and be busy again?  I agree with Allender that there is a deeper issue here.  He puts it this way: "We are driven because our work brings us power and pride that dulls our deeper desire for delight.  We are far more practiced and comfortable with work than play."

I know that is true of me.  I'm much better at work than I am at play.  So it seems that I've got to start thinking about Sabbath in a whole new way.  I need to begin treating it as a holy day.  Holy means set aside, not lost in the sea of everything else.  It is different than any other day of the week.  It should be set apart from those other days that are filled with to-do lists and tasks.  And I suppose the hope is that in practicing a holy day, that holiness might creep into the other days as well.

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Understanding the Sabbath as a day of delight is different than understanding it as a day of rest.  We get the idea that Sabbath is a day of rest from the creation story.  Genesis says that after God spent six days creating, "he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had done" (2:2).  Allender writes that God doesn't rest because he's weary from his labor -- it's not like God is taking a nap on the seventh day because he's tired.  Some Jewish commentators have suggested that what happened on the seventh day was God creating menuha -- a word that means "joyous repose, tranquility, or delight" (28).  On the seventh day, God delighted in his creation.

Allender likens God's menuha to the bonding a family experiences after the birth of their child.  "The mother and father gaze endlessly at their child, who is distinct from the parents because she is no longer merely in the mind and the womb of the mother, but external and separate" (28).  God is like a mother on the seventh day, gazing in rapture at his creation and thinking "She is so beautiful."

So, that is the kind of rest -- the kind of delight -- that we are supposed to practice on the Sabbath.  It is to be a day of joy and celebration, not a day for a nap.  Allender goes on to describe four components of this delight, that I'll tackle later.

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Rita Martin is one of the saints of our church, and she and the adult library committee recently gifted me the book "Sabbath" by Dan Allender.  As I've started to read it, I've realized how little I know about what it means to practice Sabbath.  Growing up, I always thought of Sabbath as Sunday -- the day when we'd go to church and argue about where to eat lunch, after which dad would fall asleep on the couch.  In my adult life, I'm just now starting to recover the true meaning of Sabbath, which has nothing to do with the aforementioned activities.

As I read Allender's book, I will blog about those ideas that grab my attention and shine light on the intended purpose of the Sabbath.

So, a first insight -- did you know that remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy is the fourth commandment (of the big ten that is)?  We don't practice Sabbath because it is good for us -- we practice it because it is a commandment.  It is as wrong to neglect this practice as it is to steal, lie, kill or have an affair.  So why don't we take it seriously?

Maybe the problem is that those who take the Sabbath seriously make it so legalistic that the day is no longer holy.  If we make the Sabbath all about rules and regulations, things we can and can't do on that day, then we take all the joy out of it.  Because, Allender writes, Sabbath isn't only a commandment, but it is also intended to be a day of delight . . . more on that next time.

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