Skip to main content

day off

Something I read awhile back has made me rethink my idea of what constitutes a 'day off.'  Here is the quote from Douglas Steere:  "A day off...is a bastard Sabbath." [1]  What he means is that a day off is not a legitimate sabbath.  'Not working' does not constitute what God had in mind when he initiated a day of rest.  So what does it mean to keep a sabbath, and to keep it holy?  Steere suggests that it is much more than a day of 'not doing.'  It is a day of getting ourselves out of the way.  Embracing silence, embracing prayer. 

This quote of Steere's is taken from Eugene Peterson's book, The Pastor.  Peterson goes on to describe how his interaction with Steere initiated a change in how he and his family took a day off during the week.  "We deliberately separated ourselves from the workweek .. .and gave ourselves to being present to what God has done and is doing, this creation in which we have been set down and this salvation in which we have been invited to be participants in a God-revealed life of resurrection." [2].  For him and his wife, this meant a weekly ritual of sending the kids off to school, packing a simple lunch, and heading to a trailhead.  They read a psalm and prayed, then walked in silence for the morning.  Over lunch, they talked about anything and everything, but they especially paid attention to the week they had just lived through, the holy bits and the ordinary bits.  He states that it always turned out that they had missed a lot.  "Each Sabbath became a day of remembering, becoming aware of where we were, who we were - the gifts of God for the people of God." [3].

Thinking about this concept of a 'day off' reminded me of something Bernard of Clairvaux talked about - the four loves.  The first stage is where we love self for self's sake.  This comes pretty easy and natural to most of us.  We love and take care of ourselves first.  The second degree is loving God for self's sake.  Here we love God for what he can do for us, how he can improve our lives.  The third stage is loving God for God's sake, and this is where true worship happens.  The final degree is love of self for God's sake.  This is a very difficult one, but it is where we truly see ourselves as God sees us, and we unite our wills with his.

As I was thinking about this, I realised that a typical 'day off' which consists of rest and play and perhaps some celebration is very much on the first level of self-indulgence.  And much of my so-called 'holy activity' falls in the second category where I am looking for God to give me something or rejuvenate me.  So much of the time we are only concerned with our own amusement and well-being.  It is not a sabbath if it is centred solely around my own interests.  What Peterson and Steere are talking about is a day where I forget about my desires and my work and set some time apart to pay attention to what God is doing in order to reorient my life according.  That is a true sabbath.  Time set aside for God's pleasure.  I get to participate in that.  What a privilege and wonder!  Why don't I do it more often?

[1] Douglas Steere as quoted by Eugene Peterson in The Pastor.  (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 220.
[2] Peterson, 220.
[3] Peterson, 221.

The photo:  Me at the lake in St. Donat on a weekend away last year.  Photo credit to Dean.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go

soul refrigerator

I went grocery shopping yesterday and came home with three bags of food. After I unpacked them all, this is what my fridge looked like: really empty. How does that happen? How can I feel so full and ready for any food emergency one moment, and after one quick glance, realise that I have nothing, really? Today is one of those days in my soul as well. I woke up with gratitude and fullness in my heart, ready to take on this day and all the wonderful opportunities that it presented. Then I caught a brief glance of some emptiness in my life and bam - my buoyancy was compromised. For the past few hours I have been treading water, trying to keep my head in a positive space, bobbing in and out of disappointment, and catching myself whining with pathetic indignity at the cement blocks of other people's stupidity that are tangled around my ankles. When I am staring at the empty refrigerator of my soul, these are my thoughts. Where do I go from here? Perhaps I should slam that refrigerator

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim