Let’s face it: for all our emphasis on resting on the Sabbath day, Seventh-day Adventists are a busy, industrious lot. In fact, the founding generation of the Adventist church was so restless, even after discovering the Sabbath, that a number of them actually died from literally working themselves to death and neglecting their health. (If you’ve ever wondered why Adventists are so big on health, it’s because so many mistakes were made in this area early on.)
That founding generation figured out the basic importance of the Sabbath: that it is a sign of loyalty to God and that it’s great to worship with God’s people, particularly on the day He designated.. However, there’s so much more to be enjoyed from it than merely transplanting the cultural norms of 19th century America’s Sunday observance to a different day. The Sabbath, at its core, is about rest. The very word Sabbath means “to cease.” This finally gets me to the implications this has for prayer. So often, our prayers are incredibly chatty things where we talk at God at length, whether to present our requests, or to tell Him how great He is, or how great things are in general. That’s fine, and a very important and Biblical component of our prayer life. However, there are times when the most valuable form of prayer can actually be to stop talking, stop verbalizing, and just rest. Why is rest so hard? So often we feel a drive to do, to accomplish, to earn our worth. There is a basic truth that if you want something to happen, you do have to take action to go get it. It’s counterintuitive for that action to be deliberate non-action, yet Jesus did this a good deal. So many lines in the Gospels describe Him leaving the crowds, leaving His disciples, and withdrawing to a solitary place to pray. I’m sure that Jesus talked through some of His time in prayer, but if He had been doing so out loud, all the time, every time the Bible mentions Him spending nights in prayer, He would have blown His vocal cords. From these gospel accounts I get the impression that much of His strength was drawn from knowing when to pause the flow of activity and just quietly reconnect with His Father. If the very Son of God, who is Himself God Incarnate, needed this kind of dedicated alone time to fulfill His mission, how much more do we? Resting in God’s presence may not feel very productive, but in the long run, it’s one of the most productive things we can do. The pandemic has created an interesting situation in which some people are getting more solitude than ever, but some are packed like sardines in isolation with their families. If the latter is you, it can be helpful to establish family rules about how a person can be respected if they wish to be alone. Whether it’s a designated chair or setting a timer, it can really improve family life for each member to get some solitude every once in a while to collect their thoughts and connect with their Creator. Even a child benefits from some time spent drinking in the quiet of Sabbath afternoon apart from media screens and constant stimulation. For some of you, trying to spend quiet time without active writing or verbal prayer may lead you to fall asleep. If so, you probably needed it; there’s no shame in seeking God and bumping into physical rest instead. He created your body, and cares about its health. Some of you may find it easier to have a restful encounter with God if you go to a pretty natural place and let yourself soak in God’s presence in nature. If, like me, you don’t really have one nearby that isn’t full of traffic noise, finding even one natural thing to fix your eyes on can be helpful. This is going to sound weird, but many times God has given me a restful sense of His presence while I’ve been looking into the eyes of a housecat. But why not? That creature is God’s handiwork, and if you struggle with learning how to rest, just look at a cat sometime. They’re experts at it. They sleep 16 hours a day, spend most of their waking time peacefully watching their surroundings, and what little time is left after that is either spent playing or yelling at their owners to feed them. Humans aren’t meant to rest quite as much as these little sloths, but sometimes we need to look at extremes in the other direction to correct our own deficiencies. The Sabbath dignifies both work and rest by separating the two and setting time aside for each. In work, we act as God’s instruments in the world, but in rest we come before Him to enjoy His presence and receive His grace. We cannot work without that rest. This Sabbath, I pray you enter that rest and experience your Creator in a meaningful way.
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AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
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