Resting on the Sabbath

Hello and welcome!

It has been on my heart for some time now to focus on a Sabbath day or a day of rest. I am a follower of Jesus and if you are too or know about the Christian faith you've probably heard of the Sabbath day before. The Sabbath day is a day to rest. We took this from Genesis when God created the whole world and everything in it, He worked for six days and rested on the seventh.

"On the seventh day God had finished his work of creation, so He rested from all His work."

Genesis 2:2

Technically by the Jewish tradition, the seventh day was a Saturday. In today's culture, the Sabbath is generally celebrated on a Sunday. I grew up observing the Sabbath on a Sunday and remember that being a big day of rest for my parents. Even some of my favorite books speak about the Sunday Sabbath and how they were celebrated long ago in pioneer times. The Litte House on the Prairie series speaks about their Sunday routines and how they did nothing they didn't have to do on Sunday because it was their Sabbath.

Funnily enough, it was actually the Little House books that helped me understand more about the Sabbath and what was meant by "rest". That's just the thing about being a Christian. Faith is so personal and being able to have this sort of relationship with God means learning things that are yes, generalized in the faith as a whole, but also it means learning things that are personal to you and will help you connect the best with God.

For years I tried to make Sunday my Sabbath just like my parents did. But it just never worked out. Really, it just never did. There was just too much to do in my family's situation. Sunday was a busy day for us between church and Sunday school and getting ready for the week ahead and making sure my step-daughter got back to her mom's. It was just always go go go on Sundays. When I started learning more about the importance of taking a rest day, I realized that Sunday really just didn't work for us. Which is the great thing about being a Christian.

I now try to make my rest day on Saturday. This does not always work out either as anyone with children can imagine. Sometimes there's just a load of things to do. Sometimes we are hosting on a Saturday, in that case, I do take my rest day earlier in the week which is the flexibility I am blessed with as a stay-at-home mom. While the day itself is important to find, I also believe it's important to actually understand what makes the Sabbath a day of rest and it was something I was confused about.

I'll go back to my Little House on the Prarie example. The second book, Farmer Boy, goes into quite a lot of detail about how Almanzo (Laura Ingall's future husband) and his family celebrated the Sabbath and how much Almanzo, as a little boy hated it. In the book, it says he hated Sundays because he couldn't do anything fun. He wasn't allowed to play or even go work outside for fun, he had to sit inside with the rest of his family and rest (which sounds like a dream to us adults but a punishment for kids). In the book, it also says that Almanzo was so bored on Sundays that he couldn't wait until chore time. That was a turning point for me. It was this Sabbath day of rest but they still had their chore time.

Which maybe you're like duh, of course, they did. But for me, I didn't really think of that. In my head, the Sabbath was taught as a day of you literally did basically nothing. But even thinking back to my childhood when my parents took their Sabbath on Sunday, my mom still had to do the dishes and the laundry. She didn't just get to neglect her responsibilities as a mom, wife, and adult but she rested from her typical work, which for her was her job outside our home.

I think that for me that was the most important thing to realize. I put so much pressure on myself to figure out this Sabbath thing and do what was going to honor God. I am so grateful for the knowledge God lead me to that helps me to understand what the Sabbath rest really means. It's taking a rest from our normal work. That may not even mean not doing work at all. Maybe there is some form of work that you enjoy doing, if it is rejuvenating to you then I believe it is a way of resting.

Obviously, I'm not some sort of Biblical scholar here. These are just things I've observed and learned over the past couple of years on how to really take a Sabbath day to rest. For me, I use Saturday as my Sabbath. And yes, on Saturdays, I have to get up and cook for my family, I have to do dishes and give baths and do laundry. Sometimes on a Saturday I even have to do other errands I don't normally do and can't do without my husband because I'm so far along in my pregnancy, like taking my son for a haircut. Before I thought if I was doing these things on my Sabbath, that I was failing. I wasn't really resting if I was doing anything at all besides sitting on the couch and reading a book or something like that.

But God... (some of the sweetest words ever).

God has revealed to me in the last bit that the resting occurs from resting from normal work. I don't do really any housework aside from the bare minimum of dishes and laundry. I take this day to do things I enjoy and spend time with my family. And I do still rest. During my son's quiet time, instead of having scheduled housework to do, I usually lay down myself and take a nap. Now that I write that, it just sounds so simple but for a long time, I felt really guilty if I did anything on the Sabbath. But God opened my eyes to what it really meant. The resting is yes, sometimes in the form of actually taking a nap but sometimes it's in the form of doing something you are passionate about, something out of the ordinary that will help rejuvenate yourself.

I know we live in the world of being constantly on the go. But I encourage you to figure out a rest day for yourself. As they say in Little House "It's not good for a body to work seven days a week." So take some time to rest. Have a nap, enjoy a movie, paint a picture, decorate a room, tend to your flowers, whatever that rest looks like for you, find time for it. You will feel better. Besides, even God rested.

Thank you for reading. I hope you found some encouragement here today.

Until next time.