“Sabbatical” by luca.sartoni is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that God had done, and God rested on the seventh day from all the work that God had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that God had done in creation.
Genesis 2:1-3
Then Jesus said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.
Mark 2:27
God rested! Isn’t that incredible to think about? God did not just take a power nap or walk at lunch; God created a recurring day of each week to rest. The Hebrew word shabbat (שָׁבַת), from which we get the word Sabbath, can mean rest; it can also mean cease and desist. It makes me wonder if God struggled to take time to rest. Perhaps God enjoyed the busyness, the challenge of doing good, and then flipping the light switch from day to night, eager for a new day to create. For 6 straight days, God not only moved mountains but made mountains. Why would God pause the momentum of creation? Could God have made more if God had kept God’s nose to the grindstone? Why would God create a weekly cease and desist order from working?
Because we are all part of it, we often fail to recognize the spiritual costs of capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership, geared toward expanding profit. The purpose is more and more, and enough is never enough. Language like “I will sleep when I am dead,” “Rise and grind,” “While they sleep, I grind,” “If it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t make sense,” “Wake up to hustle” are common in our society. Taking an entire day devoted to rest is antithetical to the goals of capitalism, unless data shows that rest will make more money. As a culture, we don’t know how to rest, and our understanding of rest has been influenced by the toxicity of grind culture.
Can I really take an entire day away from work? Will I miss out on that promotion if I take time to rest? What if I don’t cross all the T’s or dot all the I’s? How can I justify an unproductive day? Perhaps God was thinking, I could tweak this or that about creation. One more day, and perhaps mosquitoes won’t be so annoying. CEASE and DESIST. God rested. God had to rest, because God’s purpose is not the same as capitalism. As we see in the creation story, the purpose of creation is not more and more, but rather ecosystems, community, and living in right relationship with one another and with God. God needed to rest, because that joy was the true purpose of the work. It was God’s divine right to rest, just like it is our human right to rest. Jesus even teaches that the Sabbath was made for humans to cease and desist from becoming workaholics.
I get it, there is no time…, but there is. Life is to be lived, and rest, sabbath, interrupts the narrative that we aren’t whole until we have this number in our bank account, or this title in front of our name. Rest brings us back to God, to community, the purpose of this life we are blessed to live for now.
I leave you with this: rest, and when that excuse that there is no time pops into your mind, remember, “even God rested.”
