There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.
ONE OF THE WAYS I got around sabbath-keeping for so long is that I dismissed it as “a Jewish thing” that had very little to do with me. It was certainly a nice idea, but I wasn’t convinced it was something important from Godfor me. I am not alone in this; it seems many have had a tendency to dismiss sabbath as being part of another culture, a relic of another place and time. This is why it is so important to begin our exploration of the sabbath by fully grasping that this whole idea actually begins with God. God lived it first and later shared it with his chosen people as the optimal way to live.
When time had no shape at all, God created “a holiness in time” by working six days and then ceasing on the seventh. Over time this rhythm became uniquely associated with the Jewish culture because the Israelites were the first group of people to practice sabbath and experience its benefits, but the pattern of working six days and then resting on the seventh is something that flows from God’s very nature and being. So we honor those who first incorporated sabbath-keeping into their way of life and learn all we can from them (which certainly puts the Judeo back into our Judeo-Christian tradition!), knowing that the practice of sabbath-keeping really cannot be relegated to one group of people in one time period. Sabbath begins with God.
Sabbath is more than a lifestyle suggestion or an expression of one’s ethnicity. It is a spiritual precept that emerges from the creation narrative where God expresses God’s very nature by finishing the work and then ceasing on the seventh day. In an article about Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, George Robinson writes:
In the Torah it is written, “On the seventh day God finished the work . . . and ceased from all the work . . . and God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation” (Genesis 2:2-3). But what did God create on the seventh day? Didn’t God “cease from all the work of Creation” on the seventh day? What God created on the seventh day, the ancient rabbis tell us, was rest.
Rabbi Abraham Heschel in his seminal work,The Sabbath, elaborates:
After the six days of creation—what did the universe still lack?Menuha. Came the Sabbath, camemenuha, and the universe was complete.Menuha which we usually render with “rest,” means here much more than withdrawal from labor and exertion, more than freedom from toil, strain or activity of any kind.Menuha is not a negative concept but something real and intrinsically positive. . . . What was created on the seventh day?Tranquility, serenity, peace andrepose. To the biblical mindmenuha is the same as happiness and stillness, as peace and harmony.
What a thrilling thought! What if rest has already been created and all I have to do is find ways to participate? What if God has already done the work of creating this sanctuary in time and all I have to do is enter in? What if, on this one day a week, I am freed to cease my own work and productivity and can simply be at one with all that has already been created? And if this pattern of working six days and then entering into tranquility and peace, happiness and harmony on the seventh has always been there for us—established by God at the very beginning of the created order—how might this change our lives if we fully grasped its significance?
George Robinson continues:
Shabbat offers us a chance for peace with nature, with society, and with ourselves. The prohibitions on work are designed to make us stop—if only for one day a
