Exhortation

Sabbath-keeping is more than just putting aside our work one day in seven. It is a way of life. Even that is too narrow. Sabbath is a way of being human, a way of being human together. God commands us to be a Sabbatical people.

That sounds grand, but what does it mean? It’s easiest to begin by pointing to the pattern of our anti-Sabbatical society: The 24/7 businesses, the bombardment of news, the frantic pace. Even leisure is frenetic. And we Christians are little better. We are as frantic as anyone.

Our disorder goes deeper even than this.

Even when we stop to think, we remain hyperactive. We dissect and analyze and tear apart. We don’t take the time to be truly perceptive. Sabbath is a way of living and being. It is also a way of knowing.

To keep Sabbath is, most fundamentally, to see that “everything gained and everything claimed follows upon something given, and comes after something gratuitous and unearned.” A Sabbatical people recognizes “that in the beginning there is always gift” (Josef Pieper). To keep Sabbath is to live together with patience and gratitude, with forbearance and forgiveness, in the calm assurance that we serve an eternal God, which is to say, a God who has all the time He needs, which is to say, a God who gives us all the time we need.