Sabbath thoughts

From Barbara Brown Taylor in Leaving Church - A Memoir of Faith:

I decided to take a rest from trying to be like Jesus too. No, I won’t. No, not today. Today I will consent to be an extra in God’s drama, someone off to the side watching the scenery unfold with self-forgetfulness that is not available to me at center stage. Today I will bear the narcissistic wound of knowing that there are others who can say my lines when I am not there, including some who can say them better, and that while God may welcome my willingness to play a part, this show will go on with or without me, for as long as God has breath to bring more players to life. Today I will take a break from trying to save the world and enjoy my blessed swath of it instead. I will give thanks for what is instead of withholding praise until all is as it should be. If I get good enough at this, I may even be able to include my sorry self in the bargain, O men and women everywhere, glorify the Lord, praise him and highly exalt him forever.

Mark Buchanan in his wonderful book Rest of God says:

Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness. It is both time on a calendar and a disposition of heart. It is a day we enter, but just as much a way we see. Sabbath imparts the rest of God—actual physical, mental, spiritual rest, but also the rest of God—the things of God’s nature and presence we miss in our busyness.

Then he adds:

Taskmasters are masters of half-truth. They couch their language in just enough reality that the whole thing has the ring of authenticity. It’s true, in part, what they say: there is no end of things to do. I am a touch on the lazy side and disguise this with busyness. There is a crowd of people disappointed with me, who find me, by turn, indecisive, despotic, timid, rash, evasive, blunt, foolhardy, wise in my own eyes, foot-dragging, impulsive. I do procrastinate overmuch and at the same time make too many snap decisions. Most of my life is unfinished. Many of my efforts are slapdash and slipshod.

It’s true.

So? The lie mixed in here is that, because it’s true, I have no right to rest.

Actually, that’s true too. I have no right to a lot of things: my health, my home, my family, my salvation. May as well add rest to the list.

But thank God that God could care less about our rights. What God cares about, and deeply is our needs. And it’s this simple: you and I have an inescapable need for rest.

The lie the taskmasters want you to swallow is that you cannot rest until your work’s all done, and done better than you’re currently doing it. But truth is, the work’s never done, and never done right. It’s always more than you can finish and less than you had hoped for.

So what? Get this straight: the rest of God–the rest God gladly gives so that we might discover that part of God we’re missing–is not a reward for finishing. It’s not a bonus for work well done.

It’s a sheer gift. It is a stop-work order in the midst of work that’s never complete, never polished. Sabbath is not the break we’re allotting at the tail end of completing all our tasks and chores, the fulfillment of our obligations. It’s the rest we take smack-dab in the middle of them, without apology, without guilt, and for no better reason than God told us we could.