It’s About Time
Rested and Refreshed
January 14, 2007
Life is so much more than endless moments of consuming work, stressful problems, and chaotic busyness
We are reminded that the Chinese pictograph for “busy” is composed of two characters—“heart” and “killing.”
The Longest Night
It seems to me that almost everyone I know needs a good nights rest. We all enjoy the opportunity to sleep in til the crack of noon every once in a while. Well have you heard about the longest night in history?
The longest night in history was Sept. 2, 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted in England. The calendar arranged by Julius Caesar, by not making sufficient allowance for leap year, had caused the English date to become 11 days behind the right time. So to catch up those days were omitted after Sept. 2. The day after Sept 2 in 1752 was reckoned to be Sept. 14.
Imagine! You would go to bed on September 2 and wake up on September 14. I’m not sure what happened if you had a birthday on September 3rd! I guess you would miss a year and maybe that’s a good thing! We should all be so lucky.
Most Americans are working hard and getting very little rest or refreshment
“The busyness of my life gets in the way of developing my relationship with God.”
(Survey of 752 Christian leaders)
God Rested After He Created the Universe
2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Genesis 2:2-3
“And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.” The Bible tells us clearly that God took time for rest.
What does it mean-that God rested on the seventh day? Let me help you out here, what does rest mean to you? When you rest do you read, watch TV, go camping, take a nap? I don’t think God loaded up his SUV and went camping or kicked back in his La-z-boy to watch “Touched By An Angel”.
God rested, but his idea of rest is different. When God rested, he “ceased activity”. He did no more work and focused on what had been accomplished. That is, God focused on his new creation in general and on a man named Adam and a woman named Eve in particular.
You Need Rest and Refreshment
Three words or ideas are especially significant in this passage—“work,” “rested” and “blessed”/”made holy.”
The word for “work” occurs 3 times in this passage. It is the word generally used for human work, causing some scholars to suggest the word was deliberately chosen to hint that man should stop his daily work on the seventh day. “He rested” has the idea of “to cease,” “to desist from work,” (shabbat, “to rest”). It is “not a word that refers to remedying exhaustion after a tiring week of work. Rather it describes the enjoyment of accomplishment, the celebration of completion.”
Wenham, Word Biblical Commentary: vol. 1, 35.
Allen P. Ross, Creation and Blessing, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1988), 113.
In Exodus 31:17, we read that “in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.”
Literally: he stopped all activity. He ceased his work. And he was refreshed! I love that word! God was REFRESHED!
If God can be refreshed by stopping and enjoying the creativity of his life then if we follow God’s example of resting we, too, can be REFRESHED! Don’t you want to be REFRESHED?!?
The dictionary defines refreshed as “to renew the well-being or vigor of oneself”. We can “renew” ourselves or, in other words, become “like new” again through rest.
Bruce Ray comments on a related Sabbath passage in
“Six days do your work but on the seventh day do no work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed.”
Exodus 23:12,
He says the word translated “refreshed” also means “breathe.” He concludes that the Sabbath in the Old Testament was a God-given opportunity to catch one’s breath in the midst of a weekly routine of work.
Ray, Celebrating the Sabbath, 61.
God’s Rhythm in Time
It was never God’s desire that this earthly life was to be endured as we prepare for a future life. Yes, we believe in an eternal heaven and a better place but we also believe that God desires for us to have a good, abundant, and prosperous life today.
One of the key and critical pieces of that abundant life is the concept and practice of Sabbath Rest in your life.
Think about riding astride a galloping horse. If you ride tense and stiff, you’ll soon be exhausted and sore. But if you learn to ride in rhythm with the gait of the horse you’ll find the ride exhilarating and exciting. Life is exactly like that and practicing Sabbath rest as a consistent part of your life.
Sabbath rest is different than just taking a day off from your regular job. Sabbath rest is about not working so that you can enjoy what your work has provided. God rested so that he could enjoy his creation.
All of human kind has been made to be like God. We are created in his image. We are made to need rest.
We need sleep every night. We need to rest our bodies after physical exercise. We need to take a vacation every now and then to be re-energized and work with new vigor. And we need to have Sabbath rest in our lives. That is we need to stop working and have time to enjoy what we have created with our lives.
In Genesis God blessed the seventh day and made it holy. He set it aside as the time when the people would stop working and start enjoying their lives. It was time focused on their families. It was time to read, relax, and enjoy the life we have.
Niels-Erik Andreasen, in his book, The Christian Use of Time, says that rest responds to work in at least two different ways—1) by providing a step backward before the leap forward, it improves the efficiency and productivity of the worker, and 2) by holding off, by expressing a certain hesitancy before work it enables work to find its own rhythm of giving and taking, which is God’s rhythm.
Niels-Erik Andreasen, The Christian Use of Time, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1978), 45.
Sabbath Rest
Today we can have and need to take Sabbath rest in our lives. We don’t live under the old law of the Mosaic covenant. Sunday is not Saturday.
7 Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
Hebrews 4:7
In fact the under the new covenant made by Jesus on the cross there is a new Sabbath rest – Hebrews 4 calls it “today”.
Sabbath Rest
5 One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.
6 He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.
Romans 14:5
In Romans 14 Paul makes it clear that it might or might not be a day that is set aside. It’s not about a set time and a set ritual that must be followed.
Sabbath rest is about focus… Focus on people and enjoying what God has given you in life. Think about it. What good is life if you never take time to rest and enjoy it.
Does this tell you anything about God’s motives towards you! It does me. My God wants me to have an abundant and full life. We are not made for drudgery and slogging through our existence. Sometimes we do have to do things we don’t like and there are days you have to slog through the mud and garbage of every day battles. But especially in those times we need times of Sabbath Rest!
Practicing Sabbath Rest
Step 1: Stop working
It is not a time when we do all the stuff we couldn’t get done during the week. It’s not a time to run to Walmart, pick up the dry-cleaning, shop for little Bobby’s birthday party, cut the grass, change the oil in the car, clean the cat box, and all of our other errands. Sabbath is not a time you take off from work to do more work.
In his book, “Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest”, Wayne Muller says “Even if we were to leave work behind and seek the comfort and security of a monastery, we would be handed a broom, and told to sweep the walks. Even in monasteries we must cook and clean, build and repair, garden and sweep. But there is a time to sweep, and a time to put down the broom and rest
Sabbath is a time to stop. Stop working, stop making money, stop rushing here and there. Stop and listen to your life. Stop and listen for the still, small voice of God. Stopped is something that can’t be bought. You just have to stop.
But in our society, we don’t value “stop”, we don’t value the Sabbath. We brag about work and our busyness, as if this proves our worth and value.
Stopping because it is time to stop.
We can easily get into a cycle of “work and more work”, convincing ourselves that our work is so crucial that it is worth the sacrifice of healthful rest and refreshment. However, stopping for rest and refreshment cannot be dependent upon our being ready to stop. (We may never be “ready” to stop!) Rather we stop because it is time to stop. We stop because “there are forces larger than we that take care of the universe, and while our efforts are important, necessary and useful, they are not (nor are we) indispensable…A day of rest helps us retreat from the “illusion of our own indispensability.”
Ibid., 175.
The blessing of stopping.
“One of the reasons that the Sabbath is so freeing is that when we cease working, we dispense with the need to create our own future. A major blessing of Sabbath keeping is that it forces us to rely on God for our future.”
Marva Dawn
We often define ourselves by our work and accomplishments. But this need to accomplish often leads to a frantic, misuse of time. One of the helpful aspects of stopping is that as we cease being productive, we can intentionally choose to use time simply to be with God and people. When we order our lives around the focus of our relationship with God, we remind ourselves of Who is in charge. Marva Dawn, in her book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, says,
Practicing Sabbath Rest
Step 1: Stop working
Step 2: Enjoy Your Life
We push ourselves so hard that we become weary. Moses led the people through the desert and, at one point, God tells him, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
Sabbath time is not just rest; it is sacred rest. It is about walking through the woods, an early morning cup of coffee while we watching the sun rise. It’s about stopping and playing with the kids and the grandchildren. It is when you connect with God.
“The stopping of work is only the beginning of Sabbath observance. Its essence is a ceremonious abstaining from all acts, even the most effortless, that contain an element of innovation, of process, or of workmanship. Within its own terms, the Jewish Sabbath is a dramatic ceremony penetrating all of life. It is not simply a day off. This demanding rite turns twenty-four hours of every week in to a separated time, apart in mood, texture, acts and events from daily existence.”
Ibid., 50.
“Remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy.” God consecrated Sabbath time as a special time. Sabbath time is when we stop and remember the holiness of the life in which God has blessed us. We need to stop and smell the roses. We need to stop and remember what is really important in our lives. If we grab a sandwich and a drink on the way out the door, that’s eating. But if we stop, take a small crust of bread, a sip of wine, in the fellowship of others, then it becomes a sacrament.
Start Today
9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
John 10:9-10
Under an old brass paperweight is my list of things to do today
by Toby Keith
Go to the bank and the hardware store, put a new lock on the cellar door
I cross ’em off as I get ’em done but when the sun is set
There’s still more than a few things left I haven’t got to yet
Go for a walk, say a little prayer
Take a deep breath of mountain air
Put on my glove and play some catch
It’s time that I make time for that
Wade the shore and cast a line
Pick up a long lost friend of mine
Sit on the porch and give my girl a kiss
Start livin’, that’s the next thing on my list
