“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28 -30, NIV”
Quite simply, I personally have felt for some time that it’s time to stop “doing church,” and instead to “be the church.” This means to be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and to do what Jesus did. It’s a lifestyle and process of spiritual formation. Jesus’ message is so much bigger and profound than the sin management that modern church has focused upon. While salvation and eliminating systemic evils in society remain important aspects of Jesus’ message, I believe that Jesus’ message equally included the Greatest Commandment, as defined in the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Mark 12: 29-31) which is an all-encompassing way of life.
Three Highlights from Sabbath Week 1 – Stop.
Exhaustion is a spiritual problem. Beyond the physical, mental, and emotional issues associated with our exhaustion, not having margin makes it difficult to love others. And when we can’t love others our ability to follow the Greatest Commandment is hindered.
Invitation to Stop, Rest, Delight, Worship. As we’ll learn over the next four weeks of this practice, the Hebrew word for Sabbath, “shabbat,” literally means “to stop,” but can also mean “to rest,” “to delight,” or “to worship.” So, there’s a much deeper meaning to Sabbath than to just kick back and relax. As we find in the founding of the universe story in Genesis 2: 1-3, God sabbathed. Why? Combined with how God modeled the Sabbath and included it as one of the ten commandments in Exodus 20: 8-11, we see that the Sabbath is part of the cosmic rhythm of life designed by God. 6:1. Six days of work followed by 1 day of Sabbath. It’s natural order that I would argue is on the same level of the law of gravity itself. It’s God’s design. And when we do not follow the Sabbath we should expect our lives to be out-of-sync with the universe.
People who Sabbath live all seven days differently. To be clear, the Sabbath is not about taking a one-day vacation during the week. This is about cultivating a spirit of restfulness in all areas of our life, every day. We move from a state of hurry to peace, busyness to margin, burnout to sustainable peace, distraction to clarity, isolation to solitude, crowds to community, and gasping to gratitude.”