Moses
Heigh Ho! Heigh Ho!
It's Off To Work We Go
Rest and be thankful.
— Inscription on a stone seat in the Highlands of Scotland
There was this fellow Moses knew who went out to pick up sticks on the Sabbath to build a fire and warm his hands:
Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, "The man must die" (Numbers 15:32-36).
"Good grief," Charlie Brown would say. This man's offense seems so trifling and yet he's guilty of a capital crime! "More must be meant than meets the ear," Milton said.
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Indeed there is, though it may be enough at this point to say that working too hard is a dangerous occupation — hazardous to your health, you might say.
I must admit, however, that I'm a workaholic at heart. But I'm in good company. As James Taylor would say, "There's a holy host of others standin' round me." Most of us are driven, compulsive performers, and unfortunately our work habits carry over into our walk with God and our work for him. We're driven and compulsive in our faith and service — always hustling and hoping to do more.
Jesus was never that busy. You just don't see him rushing around like we do. He had an infinite job to do and only three and a half years to do it, and yet there was hardly a trace of effort in his work. Even when people made impossible demands of him, his pace was measured and slow. In fact, the only person he ever told to get busy was Judas: "What you are about to do, do quickly," he said (John 13:27).
Someone has said that "busy Christian" ought to sound to us like "adulterous wife." The two ideas are utterly incongruent. Busyness is not a Christian virtue, and spiritual maturity is not measured by the amount of work we do, no matter what we're busy doing or how much we get done. There's more to the Christian life than increasing its speed.
Thomas Merton has written with great wisdom,
To allow one's self to be carried away
by a multitude of conflicting concerns,
To surrender to too many demands,
To commit one's self to too many projects,
To want to help everyone in everything,
is to succumb to violence.
Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace.
It destroys the fruitfulness of our work
because it kills the root of inner wisdom
which makes work fruitful.
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Most of us, however, though we know better, can't let up. Life for us is one prolonged and dedicated struggle to fix everything that's broken and achieve perfection in all we do, no matter how much it takes out of us. We have to keep hustling and hoping to do more — more than God ever intended for us to do, more than God ever designed our bodies to do — a condition a friend of mine calls "hyper-living." That's why we get so weary and worn-out, and that's why we want to quit. What we need is rest.
Remember the Sabbath
There's a God-given method for relieving fatigue. Israel's prophets called it Shabbat. That's where we get our English word, Sabbath. Essentially it means "to cease and desist." "Cessation of work with accompanying rest" is the connotation.
Shabbat is the oldest and most important institution in the world. It was established in the beginning:
By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 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).
Genesis 1 describes God's handiwork. For six days God worked to create a world of enjoyment for his children. Then on the seventh day he took a breather to relax and luxuriate in what he had done.
God gave his day of rest special prominence and significance: He blessed it and made it different, the commonplace meaning of the word holy. The Sabbath was unique and novel, absolutely unlike any other day.
In the beginning God established a rhythm in the cosmos — six days of work and one day of rest. He did so by
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example and decree, writing that cadence large on our calendars.
The phrase "there was evening and there was morning" is conspicuously absent on the seventh day. The seventh day has a beginning, but it goes on forever - an eternal pause from work. There is simply no end to God's rest.
Ancient history
The notion of a restful seventh day is rooted deep in human memory and history. Very early Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets contain calendars in which the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first and twenty-eighth days are distinguished from the rest by rubrics. In several of those tablets the word shabatum appears, a word similar to the Hebrew shabbat.
In one tablet the shabatum is called um nuch libbi ("a day to rest the heart"). On those days kings were not permitted to discuss affairs of state, physicians couldn't care for the sick, and other proscriptions applied.
There are major differences between the Babylonian shabbatum and God's shabbat, not the least of which is the fact that the Babylonian sabbath applied only to royalty and to certain professionals and not to ordinary citizens. The common folk were drudges who toiled seven days a week.
Despite the differences in the two sabbaths, however, the fact remains that the notion of Shabbat was ingrained in the human race — a vestigial memory of God's created rhythm: six days of labor followed by one day of rest.
Manna and the morning after
The second reference to the Sabbath occurs in a context of gathering and preparing manna. The word Shabbat occurs in the biblical text here for the first time, though the idea is clearly inferred from the creation story.
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Each morning everyone gathered as much [manna] as he needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much — two omers for each person — and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. He said to them, "This is what the LORD commanded: 'Tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.'"
So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. "Eat it today," Moses said, "because today is a Sabbath to the LORD. You will not find any of it on the ground today. Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any (Exodus 16:21-30).
For six days the sons of Israel gathered manna. Each day brought its own supply — as much as anyone could eat. The lesson of trust for daily bread was constantly being enforced: each day came and the manna fell.
On the sixth morning twice as much manna lay waiting on the sands of the desert. God had been at work through the night, anticipating his children's needs, providing up front so they could rest and enjoy his Sabbath.
The ten words
The fourth commandment codified the Sabbath and made it a distinctively Hebrew institution:
"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son
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or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy" (Exodus 20:8-11).
Here Shabbat is connected with God's seventh-day rest. The Sabbath was a day to remember — to rest and relax because God had done all that was necessary to do.
In Moses' later elaboration on this law, he insisted that even in the busiest times of the year God wanted his children to rest. "Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest, even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest," he insisted (Exodus 34:21).
Once more God wanted his children to know that even when they were not working God was working to get their work done.
Free at last!
The Sabbath law was reissued when Israel camped on the plains of Moab:
"Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an
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outstretched arm. Therefore, the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day" (Deuteronomy 5:12-15).
In the two biblical versions of the Sabbath law the commands are identical but the reasons differ. The reason in Exodus is that God created the world and everything in it for us to enjoy. The Deuteronomic reason for Sabbath-observance is that God has forever delivered his people from drudgery.
Israel's ancestors in Egypt went four hundred years without a vacation — they could never take a day off. They were chattel, doing mindless, menial tasks, making bricks without straw. Then God went to work and set them free. The Sabbath was a day to remember that great emancipation and the redemptive work he had done.
The sabbatical year
The principle of a recurring day of rest is extended to the land:
"For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the LORD. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards" (Leviticus 25:3-4).
Every seventh year the land itself was to have a sabbath of rest from sowing and reaping, not so much for the sake of the land as for the laborers who worked it. Here's relief from the tyranny of production. God would see to it that the volunteer yield of the land would suffice:
"You may ask, 'What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?' I will send
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you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in'" (Leviticus 25:19-22).
This is the law of the manna on a larger scale (Exodus 16:22), the point of which once more is that while Israel rested God was providing. Farmers could let the land lie fallow and let God work their fields.
Canaan rest
God also taught Shabbat through the conquest and settlement of Canaan:
"Remember the command that Moses the servant of the LORD gave you: 'The LORD your God is giving you rest and has granted you this land'" (Joshua 1:13).
When Israel was about to occupy the land they were told that God would fight their battles for them, drive out the Canaanites, guarantee their right to the land and give them rest. In the end the Lord did just that: He "gave them rest on every side, just as he had sworn to their forefathers. Not one of their enemies withstood them; the LORD handed all their enemies over to them" (Joshua 21:44).
Once again God preceded them, anticipating their needs: "I sent the hornet ahead of you, which drove them out before you," he said. "You did not do it with your own sword and bow" (Joshua 24:12). God conquered Canaan; all Israel had to do was enter in and enjoy the rest he had provided. For twenty five years Israel had been fighting a battle that God had already won.
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The sign
The most significant of all Sabbath verses is sometimes overlooked:
The Israelites are to observe the Sabbath, celebrating it for the generations to come as a lasting covenant. It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested (Exodus 31:16-17).
Here Shabbat is designated a "sign" of the covenant between God and Israel. Ezekiel expressed that idea more fully: "I gave them my Sabbaths as a sign between us, so they would know that I the LORD made them holy" (Ezekiel 20:12).
The sum of Ezekiel's argument is that the Sabbath was a sign or symbol to Israel of a greater reality: God is the one who sanctifies and sets men and women right. That's why Sabbath-keeping was so important; it connoted far more than it denoted. It signified the condition of one's heart. Those who kept Shabbat exemplified what it signified. They were resting in what God had done.
John Calvin said, "The Lord enjoined obedience to almost no other command as severely as to this [see Exodus 31:13; 35:2]. When he wills through the prophets to indicate that all religion has been overturned, he complains that his Sabbaths have been polluted, violated, not kept, not hallowed — as if, with this homage omitted, nothing more remained in which he could be honored [Isaiah 56:2; Jeremiah 17:21-22,27; Ezekiel 20:12-13; 22:8; 23:38]."
And that's why Sabbath-breaking was serious sin: those who rejected Shabbat signified that they had not entered into God's rest. They were still trying to achieve salvation on their own.
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The would-be woodcutter revisited
That's why so much severity was shown to the man who gathered wood on the Sabbath (Numbers 15). This man's lawlessness was not casual or accidental. It was intentional. The Hebrew verb translated "gathering" suggests repetitive wood-gathering, indicating this was more than a one-time excursion. It was a recurrent act. This man was flaunting his wood-gathering, demonstrating his intention to defy the law against lighting a fire on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:3). He was a determined, defiant "worker."
The story is actually an illustration of the difference between "unintentional" and "defiant" sin, spelled out in the preceding paragraph: "If just one person sins unintentionally, he must bring a year-old female goat for a sin offering. The priest is to make atonement before the LORD for the one who erred by sinning unintentionally, and when atonement has been made for him, he will be forgiven . . . But anyone who sins defiantly, whether native-born or alien, blasphemes the LORD, and that person must be cut off from his people" (Numbers 15:27-30).
Unintentional is the wrong word, preserving, as it does, an old but false distinction between "witting" and "unwitting" sins. The Hebrew verb translated "unintentional" here means "to go astray" and can refer to serious, deliberate sins of the flesh — lying, theft, perjury, debauchery and the like — some of which are quite intentional and all of which can be forgiven (see Leviticus 6:1-7).
"Defiant" sin, on the other hand, is not a particular sin, but rather a disposition toward God. It is sinning "with a high hand" — raising one's fist and planting it in God's face. There was no forgiveness for this sin because the sinner had rejected the God who forgives. This is the sin (and the only sin) that Jesus describes as "unpardonable" (Matthew 12:31).
So, the Sabbath-breaker in this story was no ordinary sinner: He was a rebel, one of those who had refused to enter
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the land. There was something especially perverse about his resistance to God. He would not rest in God's provision and salvation. He was on his own, and that was (and still continues to be) serious sin.
Fringe benefits
Immediately afterward, the Lord commanded Moses to
"speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the LORD, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by going after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes. Then you will remember to obey all my commands and will be consecrated to your God. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the LORD your God'" (Numbers 15:37-47).
These fringes were like the strings we tie on our fingers to remind us of things we must not forget. It's God's way of saying, "Never forget to remember the Sabbath!"
The point of the Sabbath
Before there was a single human being in the world to appreciate it God set apart the seventh day by example and precept. It was for the use and benefit of the human race — a day of physical rest — but it was "meant to represent to the people of Israel spiritual rest, in which believers ought to lay aside their own works to allow God to work in them" (John Calvin, Institutes viii: 28).
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Israel's symbolic Sabbath was God's way of getting his children to rest in what he was doing. He knows our tendency to work ourselves to death. It's his way of saying, "Remember my work, relax and take delight in me" (Isaiah 58:13-14).
Jesus and the apostles
When you come to the New Testament you find Jesus and the apostles taking a rather cavalier attitude toward the Sabbath day. Our Lord himself periodically violated this most cherished of Israel's conventions, insisting that he had the right to do so because "the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath" (Matthew 12:8).
Paul abrogated Sabbath day observance declaring that observance of days is characteristic of those who are weak in the faith (Romans 14:1-5), who do not know that God has "canceled the written code, with its regulations, . . . nailing it to the cross" (Colossians 2:14).
"Therefore," he goes on to say, "do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ: (Colossians 2:16-17). The Sabbath day had been set aside since it was merely a shadow of something more substantial. Reality had come; the sign was no longer needed.
The first Christians took Paul's instruction to heart. They ignored the Sabbath day as a day, changing their time of worship to Sunday, the first day of the week. The Christian Sunday is not a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath "changed into the first day of the week," as one confession puts it, but rather a distinctively Christian institution adopted because Sunday was the day on which our Lord rose. That's why Sunday goes by the name, the "Lord's Day" (see Acts 20:7).
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The creation of rest
The writer of Hebrews brings everything into focus. Thinking of those Israelites who perished in the wilderness he wrote,
Who were they who heard and rebelled: Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, "So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'" And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: "And on the seventh day God rested from all his work" (Hebrews 3:16-4:4).
The author quotes from the creation story and insists that God's "work has been finished since the creation of the world."
Then he quotes from Psalm 95:7-8 and its implied promise of rest for the believers in David's day: "Today, if
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you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the desert."
God's offer of rest was not exhausted by Joshua's conquest of Canaan because the "rest" was still being extended to Israel in David's day, four hundred years after Joshua. Furthermore, he insists, that rest "still stands" (4:1). It is, in fact, a sabbaton — a work usually translated "Sabbath observance," but which implies perpetual Sabbath (4:9).
Here is the reality: God is for us and has been working for us from the beginning. Our salvation, our sanctification, our glorification is accomplished by believing in what he has done. Rest is all we have to do. "Anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his" (Hebrews 4:10).
Doing the work of God
Some Jews once asked Jesus how they could "do God's work." he replied, "The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent" (John 6:29).
How audacious to think that any human being can do the works of God. Only God can do his works. Our work is not to do his work, but to believe that he has done everything that has to be done and can ever be done to bring salvation to us.
The Lord focused his anger on the Pharisees who burdened his people with effort-ridden activity, but he was never angry with those who were so burdened. He called them to come to him for rest.
"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).
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Shabbat
Shabbat is not a day; it's a disposition, a mind-set of resting in God for everything we have to do, believing that God is at the heart of all our activity and that all the demands upon us are in fact demands upon him.
Shabbat is a profound conviction that God is working while we rest, a serene belief that there is a strong, experienced hand at the helm, a tacit understanding that God is working out everything for good.
Shabbat is rest from our labor. It is an unencumbered, unhurried, relaxed lifestyle that grows out of a profound awareness that "it is God who works in [us] to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Philippians 2:13). F.B. Meyer says,
We must remember to maintain within our hearts the spirit of Sabbath calm and peace, not fussy, not anxious, nor fretful nor impetuous; refraining our feet from our own paths, our hand from our own devices, refusing to make our own joy and do our own works. It is only when we are fully resolved to act thus, allowing God to originate his own plans and to work in us for their accomplishment that we enter into our inheritance . . . Be full of God's rest. Let there be no hurry, precipitation or fret; yield to God's hands that he may mold thee; hush thy quickly throbbing pulse. So shalt thou build to good and everlasting purpose.
Building to good and everlasting purpose
The prophet said to David, "You will have a son who will be a man of peace and rest . . . He is the one who will build" (1 Chronicles 22:9-10). It is restful men who build enduring structures.
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Solomon understood:
Unless the LORD builds the house,
its builders labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchmen stand guard in vain.
In vain you rise early and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat —
for he grants sleep to those he loves
(Psalm 127:1-3).
Who builds? The builder does, but unless God builds, the builder's labor is in vain. Who watches? The watchman does, but unless God watches, the watchman stands guard in vain. Solomon's conclusion: It's senseless to stay up late, toiling for food. Go to sleep and let God work.
There's something wonderfully significant about this psalm — something easily missed unless we understand that Shabbat for Israel began, not on Saturday morning, but on Friday evening at bedtime.
The Hebrew evening and morning sequence says something significant to us: God puts his children to sleep so he can get his work done. "Sleep is God's contrivance for giving us the help he cannot get into us when we are awake," said George MacDonald.
In the evening, fatigue overtakes us and we have to stop working. We lay ourselves down to sleep and drift off into blessed oblivion for the next six to eight hours, a state in which we are totally nonproductive. But nothing essential stops. Though we may leave many things undone and most projects unfinished, God is still on the job. "He gives to those he loves while they sleep." The next morning his eyes sweep over us and he awakens us to enjoy the benefits of all that he has done.
Most of us, however, hit the floor running. We wolf down a Pop-Tart™ and dash out the door clutching a travel mug of
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coffee. We have to be up and doing, getting things started and getting a world of things done.
That's because we do not understand that God has been working for us all along. We have awakened into a world in which everything was started centuries ago. God has been preparing the good works in which we find ourselves walking throughout the day.
Rest
Rest in Him;
Your work is through.
Lean back on His great power;
He'll work through you.
— John Fischer
Examining our hearts
Why do we work so long and so hard? Why do we impose such tyrannical routines on ourselves? We know better; we talk about slowing down some day, but we never do. What are the motives that chain us to our desks twelve to eighteen hours of the day:
Charles Lamb asked, "Who first invented work and bound the free and holiday-rejoicing spirit down," and then blamed it all on "Sabbathless Satan" who tied us to "that dry drudgery at the desk's dark wood?" There's something to Lamb's conclusion; the devil is the one who plants in our heads the notion that everything depends on us.
But most of us can't complain too much about the devil. Our chains are self-imposed. Our work is our drug of choice, our escape from the perplexity and pain of the world. We're looking for a fix.
Or, we're looking for something to fix. We assume responsibility for everything. Our whole life is a struggle to make ourselves perfect and achieve perfection in others. We
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aim to set everything right that's wrong, forgetting that God is the only one who can set anything right. He's the fixer.
For some, work may be our sacrificial offering for sin, our expiation for the plagues of our past. Like monks in their cells we devote ourselves to drudgery, denying and flagellating ourselves, hoping somehow to save ourselves from past sin and guilt, or to prove that we're really not so bad after all.
For others, work provides opportunities to be important! We want to be wanted. That need creates the context in which we cultivate our work habits. We complain about call slips and incessant demand, but it's our need to be needed that drives the demand.
And then there are those of us who actually believe we're indispensable — that even God can't do without us. I recall praying with my wife, Carolyn, one night after returning from a weekend trip and thanking God for "taking care of things while I was gone," at which point Carolyn chuckled and wryly asked, "Who do you think takes care of things while you're here?" Touché!
Once we get it into our heads that God really doesn't need us to get his work done we can begin to deal with our manic work habits. We can take off now and then. We can take an hour each day or a portion of a day each week to be alone with God. We can take time to "howdy" with our friends and neighbors. We can take a vacation. We can miss a meeting or two. We can leave some tasks undone at the end of each day and go home. We can take time to talk and take long walks with our spouses and kids. We can hunt, fish, and golf with our friends.
Philipp Melanchthon once said to his friend Martin Luther, "Martin, this day we will discuss the governance of the universe." Luther replied, "This day you and I will go fishing and leave the governance of the universe to God."
We don't have to be dogged and driven by our work. The good news is God's Shabbat.
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Finding rest
Our high-speed lives are essentially godless lives because we think we have no time to spend with God. But we all have time if we know that God is minding the store.
The fathers of the Church well understood the importance of what they called otium sanctum (holy leisure). They knew that we cannot give ourselves to spiritual things and deepen our relationship with him if we are obsessed with a multitude of things to do and always on the go. Love for God is a tender plant that can mature only when it has time to grow. God cannot be loved on the run.
I've come to see through the years that my own ministry is the greatest enemy of my love for God. I can get so busy doing things for him that I scarcely have time for him. My colleagues share my compulsions: we have calls to make, books to read, meetings to attend, messages to prepare. Our calendars are filled with appointments, our days are consumed with engagements, our minds are crammed with projects. There's scarcely a moment when we're not scheduled. We just don't have time for God.
But then I think of Jesus' friends, Mary and Martha, in whose home he was frequently entertained. He always found it perfectly suited to his needs. One day, while he was resting there, he began to teach Mary, who sat at his feet, knowing intuitively that there could be nothing more important to do than to listen to what he had to say.
But while Mary rested and listened to Jesus, Martha hustled about, "distracted by all the preparations that had to be made," trying to make the house more presentable, doing things for Jesus he didn't want done at all.
Finally Jesus told her in his kindly way that the busyness was much ado about nothing. "Martha, Martha," he said, "You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will
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not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:41). We must not let the pressure of work take away from us "what is better."
Martha was busy and hurried,
Serving the friend divine,
Cleansing the cups and platters,
Bringing the bread and wine;
But Martha was careful and anxious
Fretted in thought and word,
She had no time to be sitting
While she was serving the Lord,
For Martha was "cumbered" with "serving,"
Martha was "troubled" with "things" —
Those that would pass with the using —
She was forgetting her wings.
Mary was quiet and peaceful,
Learning to love and to live.
Mary was hearing His precepts,
Mary was letting Him give —
Give of the riches eternal,
Treasures of mind and of heart;
Learning the mind of the Master,
Choosing the better part.
Do we ever labor at serving
Till voices grow fretful and shrill,
Forgetting how to be loving,
Forgetting how to be still?
Do we strive for "things" in possession,
And toil for the perishing meat,
Neglecting the one thing needful —
Sitting at Jesus' feet?
Service is good when he asks it,
Labor is right in its place,
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But there is one thing better,
Looking up in his face;
There is so much he can tell us,
Truths that are precious and deep;
This is the place where he wants us,
These are the things we can keep.
- Annie Johnson Flint
Holy leisure can be woven throughout the fabric of the day — a leisurely center in the midst of our work where just for a moment or two we draw near to the heart of God: remembering, reflecting, worshiping, centering on his presence.
Brother Lawrence describes this experience as "practicing the presence of God." He wrote, "I make it my business to persevere in his holy presence wherein I keep myself by a simple attention and a general fond regard to God, which I refer to as an actual presence of God. Or, to put it another way, an habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with God."
David wrote: "I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken . . . You fill me with joy in your presence" (Psalm 16:8, 11).
Shabbat can lead us into an hour, an afternoon, a day, of solitude and silence: reading, praying, thinking, reflecting, journaling. A day to listen and receive, not for others but for the simple nurture of our own souls.
Shabbat can turn our Sunday into a Sabbath experience if we so choose — our day for worship, instruction, contemplation, and prayer. Paul, however, warns us not to turn our choice of a day into sabbatarianism and require it of ourselves or others. That's legalism — adding our requirements to God's Word — and puts us back into slavery. Any day will do.
Shabbat can result in time to cultivate relationships — with our family and other friends. Relationships don't just happen;
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they are caused. And causation and cultivation take time, time we can afford if we know that God is staying on the job.
I have a self-employed friend who has decided to work four days each week so he can have three days a week to spend with his family. He may sacrifice some income, but, as he puts it, the benefits are better.
Shabbat can produce a day, an afternoon, or an hour simply to enjoy God's handiwork. What makes this a true Sabbath experience is relating everything to God's activity, thanking him in the course of the day and at the end of the day for all the joy he has brought into it — as David did:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge
(Psalm 19:1-2).
And then there are those Sabbath experiences that are pure fun: reading a Pat McManus book and laughing out loud, listening to Keith Green or Kenny G. or a bird singing in your back yard; walking a stream; playing a round of golf; running a river; tying a fly; taking a walk down the green belt with a friend (or without); puttering around in the yard; reading a child a book or reading a children's book; taking a nap.
Winnie-the-Pooh says, "Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering." Let's hear it for Pooh! He understands Shabbat.
Caveats and cautions
We must not, however, understand Shabbat to mean lethargy or sloth, what Dorothy L. Sayers described as that "great, sprawling, lethargic sin." Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins.
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The rhythm God created is work and rest. When we rest we ought to rest well; when we work, we ought to work hard. As old Satchel Paige used to say, "When I works, I works hard; when I sits, I sits loose."
A word for shirkers
In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, labouring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work [lit:"does not want to work"], he shall not eat."
We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat. And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right.
If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed. Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother (2 Thessalonians 3:6-15).
This is not simply good advice; it is an apostolic command backed up by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. Charles Lamb notwithstanding, it wasn't "Sabbathless Satan" who
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"first invented work," but rather God, who saw its need. "Six days you shall labor," he said. We Should, therefore, yield to Paul's exhortation to "settle down and earn the bread we eat."
Paul himself set the example:
We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, labouring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow (3:7-9).
Paul felt strongly about the need to work — so strongly that though he had the right to be supported in his ministry he set aside that right in order to set the pace for others. He paid the price to make his point.
A word for workers
"As for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right [noble]" (3:13).
Work can be mindless and menial, offering little challenge or stimulation, and it can be humbling — pushing brooms or building widgets — but work done for God's sake is noble, no matter what you do.
Work is valuable in itself when it's service rendered to God. Paul writes in another place, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving" (Colossians 3:23-24).
In all our work we work for the Lord, and no service rendered to him is trivial. He sees our labor and it matters to him.
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That perspective gives significance to everything we do, even the work we think no one notices or appreciates. Michelangelo, painting in some dark corner of the Sistine ceiling was asked by his helper why he was investing so much time and effort on a part of the painting that no one would ever see. He replied, "God will see!"
