Lynne Baab

Sabbath Keeping a decade later: relationships

Wednesday May 4 2016

A few weeks ago a student sat in my office telling me about a research essay he’s writing about the Sabbath in Hebrews 3 and 4. He said, “The Sabbath is a day of relationship.” Later in the conversation he repeated that idea with some additional emphasis: “Give God your body and your time on a special relationship day.”

I want to do some reflection on the Sabbath as a “special relationship day.” It might be easiest to view “relationship” here as related to time with people. And for many people I’ve interviewed, slowing down for one day a week makes for a different kind of space with children and family members. But I also want to expand “relationship” to include more than time with people. Otherwise, how could a single person whose family members are far away keep a Sabbath? What about a widow or widower whose partner for many years of Sabbath observance isn’t there any longer?

So here’s my proposal: The Sabbath is a special relationship day, and the relationships we experience on the Sabbath might include connections with people, with the Creation, and with God. Let me give some examples:

A minister told me that on the Sabbath he tries to enjoy his children rather than shape them. He knows that the primary job of a parent is to help children grow up into responsible loving adults, so for six days a week, he pays attention to the ways he needs to encourage growth in his children. On the Sabbath he simply enjoys them just as they are. This makes the day a special day in his relationship with his children, a day of joy and relaxation.

That same man told me that he tries on the Sabbath to relieve his wife from as many household tasks as he can. She does the bulk of them on the weekdays because he works more hours than she does, but on the Sabbath he tries to keep up with the dishes and tidy up the kitchen so she can have a break. He is nurturing a relationship, but not in the ways we might normally expect.

A single man in his 30s who is able to take a mid-week Sabbath told me he loves to get up and read for a while, then go for a long run, and in the evening meet up with a friend or group of friends for dinner. The bulk of his Sabbath involves being alone, something he finds very valuable because of his people-intensive job. On his Sabbath he nurtures his relationship with God through reading, with the Creation through running and with people through his dinner.

A single woman in her 40s told me about her Saturday Sabbaths. She works in a very demanding and fast-paced job, and her Sundays are taken up with church and extended family gatherings. She has decided Saturday will be her Sabbath so she can be alone with God. She relishes her alone time and the sense of companionship with God she experiences.

We need a broad understanding of what “relationships” on the Sabbath consist of. Three weeks ago I wrote about the man who goes to the gym on the Sabbath because he feels it connects him with his body as a creation of God, and thus with the whole big Creation. Countless people have told me over the years about their love of walking, biking, hiking, and simply sitting outdoors on the Sabbath. Beaches, mountains, and gardens (public and private) feature widely in these stories. If we’re going to call the Sabbath special day of relationships, we have to include our relationship with Creation – and with the Creator – in our understanding of “relationships.”

And we have to include other activities that nurture our relationship with God. Many people keep a Sunday Sabbath, and public worship is an anchor for the day for them. Others have talked to me about enjoying personal Bible study and reading Christian books on the Sabbath. My husband and I have a long prayer time together as a part of our Sabbath. All of this is good, but crossing over into a functional, productive pattern for Sabbath days is always a danger. When relating to God feels like work (not necessarily a bad thing on the six work days of the week), save that activity for another day.

(Next week: what I do on my Sabbath, the single question I am asked most often about this topic. Watercolor of Kaptit Island by Dave Baab. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “Subscribe” in the right hand column. Note that the title of this blog post refers to my book, Sabbath Keeping, which came out in 2005, a bit more than a decade ago. It has been and continues to be my best selling book.)

Resources I’ve written about the Sabbath

Articles:
A day without a “do” list
The gift of rest
Sabbath Keeping—it’s okay to start small
The gift of the Sabbath
Stopping: the gift of the Sabbath
Gifts of freedom: the Sabbath and fasting

Blog posts:
Of clouds and attentiveness
Grace gifts versus guilt-inducing obligations
Sabbath Keeping a decade later: What to do on the Sabbath
Sabbath Keeping a decade later: Gardening 
Sabbath Keeping a decade later: Stopping 

My Bible study guide, Sabbath: The Gift of Rest

Sabbath Keeping a decade later: Stopping

Friday April 29 2016

A key to healthy Sabbaths comes from the root meaning of the word “Sabbath”: stop, pause, cease, desist, or rest. The heart of the Sabbath is stopping, not finding more things to do. Several people I know observe a Sabbath discipline of journaling, which has been a great gift to them. They record prayers and thoughts, and they try to use journaling as a way to listen to God. The center of this discipline is stopping long enough to listen and pray.

Patterns of Jewish Sabbath observance are very simple. The symbols of candles and braided bread on Friday evening are reminders of God as light and God’s presence braided into our lives. A glass of wine and a box of spices at the end of the Sabbath evoke the desire to bring the sweetness of the Sabbath into the rest of the week. Married couples are encouraged to make love on the Sabbath. Families often go for long walks. Many Jews, but not all, attend synagogue.

When we set high expectations that the Sabbath will be “spiritual,” it becomes one more thing to do, continuing the addiction to productivity that is so common in our culture. As a person who has kept the Sabbath for more than 35 years, first as a stay-at-home mom, later as a writer and editor, then as a pastor, and now as an academic, I can say that some Sabbath days are very spiritual, others are peaceful, while yet others are discouraging because stopping productivity reveals a deep fatigue.

Over time, though, the Sabbath inscribes important truths on our hearts. I wrote two weeks ago about the two versions of the Sabbath command which refer to God as Creator and Redeemer. Certainly, all Christians are invited to partner with God in the work of sustaining creation and bringing redemption. We spend six days a week taking seriously our partnership with God.

But the work is God’s. Redemption comes through Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is the source of power. We are God’s beloved children, utterly dependent on God, receiving everything good from the hand of God. Because we are so easily addicted to taking ourselves too seriously, because we so easily fall into patterns of idolatry that elevate our own significance too high, we need the Sabbath discipline of stopping productivity so we can remember that God is God and we are not. Stopping on the Sabbath is a gift of rhythm – like a heart beat – that keeps our hearts in the right place.

In the years since I wrote Sabbath Keeping, this truth seems to me to be the most significant aspect of the Sabbath. Yes, the Sabbath is a lovely gift that brings rest and refreshment. Yes, the Sabbath provides relaxed time with family members and friends. Yes, the Sabbath gives us space to clear our minds so we can enter our work week with freshness. But most importantly, keeping a Sabbath week after week and year after year inscribes on our hearts that we are finite creatures of a infinite God and that the universe, our work, our families, everything we feel responsible for, belong to God. God is God and we are not. We desperately need to know this truth deep inside our hearts, and the Sabbath helps to put it there.

(Next week, more on what I've learned in the years since I wrote Sabbath Keeping. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column. Watercolor by Dave Baab of me on my Sabbath. Most of this post is excerpted from “A Day off from God Stuff,” an article I wrote in 2007 for Leadership Journal.)

Resources I’ve written about the Sabbath

Articles:
A day without a “do” list
The gift of rest
Sabbath Keeping—it’s okay to start small
The gift of the Sabbath
Stopping: the gift of the Sabbath
Gifts of freedom: the Sabbath and fasting

Blog posts:
Of clouds and attentiveness
Grace gifts versus guilt-inducing obligations
Sabbath Keeping a decade later: What to do on the Sabbath
Sabbath Keeping a decade later: Gardening  

My Bible study guide, Sabbath: The Gift of Rest

Sabbath Keeping a decade later: gardening

Wednesday April 20 2016

A few years after my book Sabbath Keeping came out, I sat next to Rick at a church dinner. Rick is an attorney who works long hours, and I knew that he had grown up on a farm in the Midwest.

At some point during the dinner, he said, “I’ve been thinking about something related to the Sabbath. When I was growing up, my parents were very strict about Sundays. There were farm chores that had to be done every day, and of course we had to do those chores on Sunday. But other than that, no work. We were allowed to read on Sunday afternoons.

“In my life these days, I read all week long as a part of my job, so I’ve often thought it would be a good thing for me to take up gardening on Sundays as a change of pace. But my upbringing still influences me. Gardening was one kind of work we never did on Sundays on the farm. So every Sunday I try to relax by reading, even though reading is such a big part of my work life. I often find myself wishing I could let myself relax on Sundays by gardening.”

I’ve thought a lot about Rick’s story in the years since he talked to me. Here are some of the things I’ve pondered.

1. Our childhood influences are often quite strong in many areas related to faith. With respect to the Sabbath, I encourage you to think about your childhood. Are there models, words or influences that shape your Sabbath practice today, for good or for ill? In what ways have you moved away from childhood patterns? Has that movement been helpful? Are there things from your childhood you’d like to recapture? Or move further away from?

2. Stopping work on the Sabbath remains at the center of the Sabbath practice. And it’s also important to think about which everyday activities feel like work to you. I wrote last week about the man who enjoys going to the gym on his Sabbath. Many others would experience going to the gym as work. For them, it wouldn’t be a good Sabbath activity. Think about which everyday activities feel like work to you, and think creatively about ways to avoid them on the Sabbath. Do you hate cooking? Then cook ahead the day before so you don’t have to do that on the Sabbath.

3. Figuring out ways to connect with God’s creation on the Sabbath is a great idea. When I did my interviews for Sabbath Keeping, people talked more about getting out in nature than any other Sabbath activity. But does “getting out in nature” include gardening? Only if gardening can be viewed recreationally. My mother, for example, who is a dedicated gardener, will stroll into her garden on Sunday to enjoy it, pick flowers, or pull up a handful of weeds, but she won’t get out her wheelbarrow and do serious gardening on her Sabbath. Others have told me they look forward to digging and weeding in their garden for many hours on their Sabbath day, because their week days are full of other kinds of work. However, there’s always a tendency for fun activities to morph into too much work, and we have to pay attention to that pattern.

4. Doing things on your Sabbath day that are different from the other days of the week is another great idea. Rick expressed his longing for that, and the man from last week’s blog post, who goes to the gym on his Sabbath, loves the change of pace from his job, which is heavily cognitive and relational. I love the change of pace in the morning of my Sabbath. Six mornings a week I get up, walk into my home office, turn on my computer and work for an hour or two before breakfast. On my Sabbath, I relish going into the living room (a different room) first thing in the morning and picking up a book or newspaper (a different activity) to relax with until breakfast. This change in rhythm and pattern is one of the refreshing joys of the Sabbath.

(Illustration by Dave Baab. Next week: more on what I’ve learned since I wrote Sabbath Keeping. If you’d like to get an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column.)

Resources I’ve written about the Sabbath

Articles:
A day without a “do” list
The gift of rest
Sabbath Keeping—it’s okay to start small
The gift of the Sabbath
Stopping: the gift of the Sabbath
Gifts of freedom: the Sabbath and fasting

Blog posts:
Of clouds and attentiveness
Grace gifts versus guilt-inducing obligations

My Bible study guide, Sabbath: The Gift of Rest

Sabbath Keeping a decade later: the first post of a series

Friday April 15 2016

About a year after my book Sabbath Keeping came out, I spoke about the Sabbath at a conference. After I spoke, the president of the organization sponsoring the conference came to talk to me. He said, “One of my favorite activities on the Sabbath is to go to the gym and lift weights.” If the central component of the Sabbath command is to stop working, how can working out at a gym be appropriate as a Sabbath activity?

He went on, “My work is so cognitive and so relational. I find I need to connect with God’s creation on my Sabbath day. As I lift weights, I am so aware of my body, intricately created by God.”

When I did the interviews for Sabbath Keeping, a large number of people talked about their joy in engaging with creation on their Sabbath day: walking, biking, hiking, sailing, throwing a frisbee for a dog. Why would working out, if it makes us feel connected to God’s creation, be any different?

The two versions of the Sabbath command in the Bible throw some light on this issue. You’ll remember that when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments inscribed on stone tablets, he became furiously angry when he saw that the Israelites were worshipping a golden calf. Moses threw down the tablets and they broke. That first version of the Ten Commandments is found in Exodus 20. Later God gave Moses another set of stone tablets, and that second version of the Ten Commandments is listed in Deuteronomy 5. The only commandment that varies very much between the two versions is the Sabbath command. There are some small differences between the two versions, and one major difference: the reason given.

In the first version, the reason for the Sabbath commandment is God’s rest at creation. Exodus 20:8-10 lays out the command, then verse 11 gives the reason: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.” When we engage in Sabbath rest, we are to remember that God made the earth and rested on the seventh day.

In Deuteronomy 5:12-14, the second version of the Sabbath commandment, the words that describe what not to do on the Sabbath have some small differences from Exodus 20. Then in verse 15, the reason is given, and this reason is totally different: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.” This reason relates to God as redeemer, the one who rescues us from slavery, and we are commanded to remember that God frees us from slavery.

Christian ministry engages on a daily basis with God’s redemption of the world. People in Christian ministry are partnering with God to help redeem the world, to help free people from slavery to sin, death and the devil. The man I spoke with at the conference was no exception. All week long he works to help his organization bring God’s salvation to the world. He spends his work week centered on God as redeemer. For him, a Sabbath focus on God as creator makes perfect sense and provides welcome balance. If he remembers God as creator on the weight machines at the gym, then working out is a good Sabbath activity for him.

Many professions center on helping God sustain creation: doctors, dentists, people in building trades and in all sorts of repair work, those who work with children, and people in many other jobs. For them, appropriate Sabbath activities might include activities that connect them with God the redeemer.

(Watercolor by Dave Baab. Next week: more on what I’ve learned since writing Sabbath Keeping more than a decade ago. If you’d like to receive an email update when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column.)

Resources I’ve written about the Sabbath

Articles:
A day without a “do” list
The gift of rest
Sabbath Keeping—it’s okay to start small
The gift of the Sabbath
Stopping: the gift of the Sabbath
Gifts of freedom: the Sabbath and fasting

Blog posts:
Of clouds and attentiveness
Grace gifts versus guilt-inducing obligations

My Bible study guide, Sabbath: The Gift of Rest

Spiritual practices for the Easter season

Wednesday April 6 2016

Did you know that in many times and places in Christian history, Easter has been viewed as a season, not just a day? The Easter season goes from Easter Day to Pentecost Sunday (May 15 this year), a period of seven weeks. Because Jesus’ resurrection is such a huge, amazing, overwhelming, fantastic gift to us, focusing on it for seven weeks allows time to ponder many aspects of what we receive on Easter Day.

The liturgical color for the Easter season is white to reflect the holiness and purity of Jesus, which enabled him to die in our place. White also symbolizes light. Jesus submitted to the darkness of the grave, and Easter morning he came back into the light, and his own light was again revealed. Paintings of Jesus after the resurrection often show him surrounded by light.

What spiritual practices are appropriate in a season of light and joy? This is a season of feasting, not fasting. Celebrate joy and light in whatever ways you can. Ponder, journal or talk with others about the joyful events of Easter and what they mean for you. Here are some suggestions for spiritual practices for the Easter season:

1. Practice thankfulness. Watch for God’s good gifts in your life and your loved one’s lives. Look for signs of Jesus’ resurrection life in events and people around you. Go out of your way to express gratitude and love to people who have cared for you. Pay attention to the small gifts of daily life, and thank God for them. To help you pay attention, consider starting (or re-starting) a thankfulness journal and commit to adding five items to the list each day. Or partner with others to talk through the things you’re thankful for every day. Be sure to pray your thanks as well.

2. Focus on light. Watch for the word “light” in scriptures, praise songs, hymns and poetry. Write a poem or statement about the ways Jesus is your light, and ask for further light in specific areas of your life and in the lives of loved ones. Use various names for God and Jesus in breath prayers: “Lord Jesus Christ, light of the world, shine your light on me” (John 8:12). “Jesus, bright morning star, guide my steps” (Revelation 22:16).  “Word of God, be the lamp to my feet and the light on my path” (Psalm 119:105). “Lord God, sun and shield, give me your light and protection” (Psalm 84:11). All of these prayers can be prayed for others as well as for yourself.

3. Ponder the fact that Jesus has freed “those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death” (Hebrews 2:15). In what ways has Jesus freed you from that fear? In what ways would you like to experience more freedom? What do you think that might look like? Journal or talk with a friend about the role fear of death has played in your life. Pray your thanks, and pray for further growth in this area.

The seven-week Easter season nudges us to look at life through the lens of resurrection power and Jesus' pure light. Maybe you’ll think of additional ways to do that.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.
   O Lord my God, you are very great.
You are clothed with honour and majesty,
   wrapped in light as with a garment (Psalm 104:1).

(Photo: Sunset in Bergen, Norway, by Ian Thomson. Next week I’ll begin a four-week series on “Sabbath Keeping a decade later.” I’ll write about what I’ve learned about the Sabbath in the decade since I wrote my book on that topic. If you’d like to receive an email when I post on this blog, sign up under “subscribe” in the right hand column. This post originally appeared on the Godspace blog.)