Seven years ago, I moved into my dorm to embark on my first year of seminary. It was a time of newness for me—I had moved to a new state, was recently engaged, and was beginning this academic adventure I had been dreaming of for nearly a decade.
Within just a few weeks of being a seminary student, I was overwhelmed. It seemed like everyone around me was way smarter than me and the work I had to do just couldn’t get done. And yet, despite all of that, I was hearing people talk about this thing called “Sabbath.” I had always thought Sabbath was a synonym for “Sunday,” and therefore, the fourth of the Ten Commandments simply meant: Go to church on Sunday.
But as I heard people talk about their Sabbath, it sounded to me like a day of rest. It sounded like a day of delight—of returning back to the joy and peace of the Garden of Eden (Eden, meaning “delight”). It sounded like a day of ceasing (Sabbath comes from the Hebrew word meaning “cease”) not only from work but also the busyness, stress, and anxiety that accompanied my work of studying.
It sounded blissful. And, in my current stage of life, impossible. But I believed that if God gave us a command, He would make it possible to follow.
So I tried it. I tried to keep the Sabbath.
I started off with just a couple hours of closing my textbooks and delighting with and in God. And over time, I gradually began increasing the time I Sabbathed until I was keeping the Sabbath for a full 24 hours.
And it’s been incredible.
Over the last seven years, Sabbath-keeping has taught me a few things. I thought I’d share some of them with you here.
1. God is God and I am not.
In Exodus 31:13, God instructs Moses to tell His people: “You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.”
In keeping the Sabbath, I have learned that God is God and I am not.
When I begin my Sabbath (typically at dinner on Friday night, though my wife and I give ourselves the flexibility to Sabbath from Thursday dinner to Friday dinner if we need to), I cease the work I’ve been doing.
Since Friday is one of my days off, that means that I typically put away whatever house projects I’ve been working on throughout the day. If I’m not the pastor on call, I may turn off my phone or, if I am on call, I may silence it and not look at it for a couple hours.
And in doing so, I proclaim a profound truth: God is God and I am not.
God is the only one who “will neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4). And because I’m not God, I can slumber, sleep, and Sabbath.
Before I began Sabbath-keeping, I had convinced myself that I had to be “on” at all times. After all, the world needed me all the time, didn’t it? The people I served needed me all the time, didn’t they? What if I let them down?
Keeping the Sabbath has taught me that if I pretend like I am God—always on and always available—then people would try to treat me like God. And in doing so, I was preventing them from turning to the only One who can be on and available at all times and who will never let them down.
Marva J. Dawn says: “Sabbath ceasing means to cease not only from work itself, but also from the need to accomplish and be productive, from the worry and tension that accompany our modern criterion of efficiency, from our efforts to be in control of our lives as if we were God, from our possessiveness and our enculturation, and, finally, from the humdrum and meaninglessness that result when life is pursued without the Lord at the center of it all.”
2. How to Break the Idol of Work
I am a recovering workaholic.
And I don’t just say that as a cutesy phrase or to be melodramatic. I genuinely believe that, for a long season of my life, I was addicted to work.
Or, to put it in spiritual terms, for many years of my life, I worshipped the idol of work.
In his brilliant book, Playing God, Andy Crouch points out that an idol is taking something “good” that God created and making it play a greater role than it was ever intended to play.
In the sixth day of creation, God blessed Adam and Eve to work in the Garden (Genesis 1:28). Work was intended to be good, to be a blessing.
But over time, I took the goodness of work and asked it to become something great. I asked my work and my accomplishments to give me that which it was never intended to give me.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with low self-esteem and self-doubt. I’ve always wanted to hear, “You are good. You are loved. You are valued.” I realized that if I accomplished things and did good work, I would get the attention I so desperately craved—attention that I convinced myself was the same as love.
Doing good work and being an accomplished person made me feel like I was good, I was loved, I was valued. But the problem with idols is that they always require just a little bit more. I would accomplish one thing and think I was good and loved and valued, only to see that someone else had accomplished more. So I would get back to work to try to achieve more in order to feel more good and loved and valued. As much as work told me I was valued, it was never enough. So I kept on working.
But it never could be enough. Work was never supposed to give me my identity. Only God could be the One to tell me who I was: a beloved child of God made in His image.
In Sabbath-keeping, I forced myself to stop working. For a long while, it was painful. At times, it felt like a detox from my addiction to work. But over time, God began smashing the idol of work. I realized that work was never intended to tell me who I was. Instead I began working from a place of rest: rest in knowing who I am in Christ.
Sabbath-keeping has helped to break the bonds of workaholism and the idol of work and bring me into the freedom of knowing that God loves me and that is enough.
3. Who I Am
Lynne M. Baab says, “The sabbath helps us know experientially that nothing we do will make God love us more.”
As God began breaking the idol of work within me through Sabbath-keeping, I began learning who I am.
In our American society, when we want to get to know someone, one of the very first questions we ask them is, “What do you do?”
We equate what we do with who we are. Sabbath-keeping has helped teach me that I’m more than what I do.
Through Sabbath-keeping, I’ve kept child of God, husband, and father as my primary identities. I’ve learned of new hobbies and delights I have. I’ve even learned of fears, stresses, and anxieties I carry with me.
Without the Sabbath, I wouldn’t have set apart time to get to know who God has created me to be.
A saying that I learned several years ago has helped to summarize what the Sabbath has taught me. It goes like this:
I’m not what I do.
I’m not what I have.
I’m not what other people say about me.
I am the beloved child of God.
I don’t have to hurry.
I don’t have to worry.
I can trust Jesus and share His love with the world.
4. Restraint
Sabbath has forced me to reckon with the finitude of my time.
Prior to keeping the Sabbath, I believed I could work endlessly. When every day is a workday, if I couldn’t finish a task today, it wasn’t a problem because I could finish it tomorrow.
When I acknowledge that my time is finite, then I realize that at least once a week, if I’m not able to complete a task/project, it will stay undone for another 24 hours.
This has taught me restraint.
One way I’ve learned restraint is to not take on too many projects or to take on projects that involve too much time. If I can’t get everything done by working 6 days a week, then I can’t take it on.
Another way I’ve learned restraint is by realizing that, sometimes, good enough is good enough. The day before Sabbath especially, I’m reminded that a sent email is almost always better than a well-worded email sitting in my drafts.
I’ve also seen how my body rests and heals on Sabbath. In doing so, I see the toll that work takes on my body. It reminds me that my body can only handle so much before it starts to pay a price.
5. How to say “no”
Similarly, keeping the Sabbath has taught me how to say “no.”
If the Creator of the Universe chose to say “cease” on the seventh day of creation, then I too can say, “I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do that.”
I’ve often heard that “every yes is a no to something else.” Sabbath has taught me to be careful with my “yeses.”
I’ve learned that it’s okay to say “no” and to cease. If the Creator of the Universe can, I think it’s okay for me to as well.
6. How to be a better husband
If you ask my wife and I what the best thing we’ve done for our marriage is, we’d both answer that it’s Sabbath-keeping.
First, because of all the above reasons, I’ve learned how to be more of my authentic self with my wife. And by being my authentic self, I’m able to be more present with her physically and emotionally.
Because I’m not constantly working or being available to work, my wife knows that when I’m present physically, I’m also going to be present emotionally. Even on weekdays that I fail to do that, the Sabbath is a “reset” button for me to remember how to be present with those I’m around.
Additionally, since we are a couple with different ways of delighting, I’m able to serve her in our preparations for the Sabbath. For example, one way that she delights is in a home that’s orderly. So on the day before our Sabbath, we try to spend time cleaning the house in preparation for the Sabbath.
And finally, one of the strange things I’ve learned about the Sabbath is that, because I’m ceasing, I find myself facing my fears and anxieties more on the Sabbath than any other day of the week. I’ve given myself time to wrestle with the things that I’ve been running from all week. By confronting those things I’ve been running from, I can be a person at peace the other six days of the week.
Holy rest—the Sabbath—allows God to work in us, which has made me a better husband and father.
7. How to Delight
I believe that the Sabbath day is a return back to Eden (“Delight”) as we anticipate our future living in a New Heaven and New Earth that is far better than Eden ever was.
As such, I’ve learned how to delight on the Sabbath.
I’ve come to think that the society we live in tends to minimize delight. I don’t know about you, but too often, I get up, rush through my morning “to-do’s” while ignoring God’s painted sunrise on the horizon, hop in my car and zoom to work without regard to the birds and the animals who are arousing from their slumber, try to help some people at my work without pausing to ask them how they are or see the image of God in them, scarf down three meals, get some things done while the sun sets amidst a glorious sky, and crawl in bed to do it all over again the next day.
But one day a week, I choose to delight. If I’m up before sunrise (and I’m usually not on Sabbath), I marvel at the creeping sun peeking above the horizon while I enjoy my morning coffee. I walk through the woods and pause to admire flowers or identify a rustling creature. I spend time with friends and ask them how they are—how they really are. I savor three meals with family or friends. I sit on the porch or talk a walk around the park as I watch the sky change from blue to orange and red and yellow and purple. I relax with people I love as we prepare for the week ahead.
Sabbath is a reorientation for me. A way to see the goodness of God through His good creation and delight in who He is. And in doing that intentionally one day a week, I begin to intentionally do it throughout the other six days as well.
I’ve spent seven years enjoying the gift God gave to the world that He called “Sabbath.” Lord willing, I’ll get to spend another seventy years setting apart one day every week to delight in His goodness before I get to spend forever enjoying the Eternal Sabbath He has promised us.
Maybe these seven years have been practice for the next seven. Maybe they’ve been practice for the next seventy. They’ve certainly been practice for forever after that.
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Hunter Bethea 
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