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I want to let you in on this secret I've been keeping for over a year...
Keeping this one goal changed my life forever: At the start of last year, I had one simple resolve… to honor the Sabbath every week.
God created us with rhythms of wholeness — six days of work and one day of rest.
The Sabbath has been a very loose spiritual practice in my adult life. My rhythm was more like five days of work - plus two extra days of church, TV, grocery shopping, sports, and deep cleaning.
Growing up in a church-staff family, the margins of our free time were always spent at church. This wasn’t bad, it has shaped much of my love for God and His people; but rest and presence was not something that was modeled in our home or honored with the same intentionality as church attendance.
I had been taught how to show my love for God through my hard work, my love for people, and my near-perfect attendance. But simply being loved by Him felt a bit foreign or awkward.
My decision to honor the Sabbath last year was a spiritual experiment. What happens to a human heart, soul, mind, and body when they seriously commit themselves to God with their time?
Healing requires a slower and more restful pace. Physical injuries demand careful and slow movement. The same is true in the healing for our spirit and emotions. Sabbath provided the slowed pace and margin I needed to heal and grow.
After a whole year, 52 Sabbath days, this spiritual practice is now the top priority I plan everything else in my schedule around.
Sabbath isn’t a legalistic or stale rule. It’s a protective rhythm of our freedom and intimacy with God.
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