Rest.
As sure as we were created to work, we’ve been created to rest. In the account of creation in the book of Genesis we see God do it, keeping the Sabbath day holy is a command that the Hebrew culture knew well. We see it as a regular rhythm in Jesus’ life. Rest is something that we need desperately in our modern fast paced culture, and Sabbath (a day of rest) is something needed, yet often overlooked. Hurry sickness is what we often find in our culture, and Bill Gaultiere of Soul Shepherding calls Sabbath-rest “medicine for our embodied souls.” Rabbi, and author, Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his book, “The Sabbath,”
“Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.”
Like any other practice, rest and Sabbath become more than recreation and ‘having a day off’ when we add the intentionality of doing it “with God.” Instead of defaulting to watching TV, or filling the day with projects and our lists of things that must get done, we are invited to intentionally “care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul” (as Heschel puts it so eloquently).
