Let’s Talk About Sabbath

I don’t know that I even knew Sabbath was an option, a thing to be practiced or observed or even thought about.

Until I went to Jerusalem.

It was a Friday night in September of 2015 and this group of twenty strangers before this trip was now entering a Jewish family’s home to celebrate Shabbat with them.

Photo by Gor Davtyan on Unsplash

Earlier that afternoon we had been walking through the street market, and the hurry in everyone around us was palpable. I asked our tour guide what was going on and he told me it was preparation for Shabbat, for the Sabbath day. When the sun went down, he said everyone would stop shopping, stop working, stop preparing and cleaning up, and just be together. Just rest.

So as the sky changed from bright to golds and pinks and dark blues all the way to evening, the whole city of Jerusalem went quiet. Went dark. Went still.

And now we all sat around this family’s living room and folding tables, in folding chairs, listening to the stories of this family and their lives in Jerusalem, of their history with Sabbath and what it means to the Jewish people, and all the nuances that come along with practicing Sabbath.

(For example, and this was WILD to me, in every building or hotel where there is an elevator, there is a “Shabbat elevator” where you do not have to push any buttons, it stops at every floor. Because even pushing buttons in an elevator is deemed “WORK” and the Jewish people do no work on Sabbath.)

It was a fascinating 24 hours that marked me.

I got home and a new book had just released by John Mark Comer—Garden City.

I bought it and took it out to my favorite place to hang on my day off each week- Leiper’s Fork. I grabbed an order of fried okra and a sprite from Puckett’s (now Fox & Locke) and laid my picnic quilt on the grassly hill, and sat and began to read. I almost finished the entire book that day. And in it, John Mark talks a lot about the advantages of observing Sabbath and people who follow Jesus. He also describes Sabbath practices in the book and lays out the basics:

Once a week, take a day away from work, chores, shopping, and technology to rest, worship, and celebrate.

(That’s the AFD translation. Read the book and you’ll hear it straight from him.)

I wondered, could a single Christian woman in 2015, with my schedule and my job and my life, actually learn to enjoy practicing Sabbath and making it a part of my weekly rhythm?

So I tried.

I had some great weeks and I had some weeks where I ignored the practice all together. It became a quiet rhythm for me, one that I would enjoy when I made space for it.

The season I remember being most moved by the practice was during the 2020 lockdown. Most of us were working from home, staying home, having to move our entire lives—ALL our practices, into our own houses, pretty close to 24/7.

In those months home alone, I learned how to finish work on Friday, pack up my computer and planner and things, and close them into my guest room, which had also become my office and podcast recording studio. When I closed that door behind me, I knew I had 24 hours free from work. I would straighten up my house and then get excited for whatever Sabbath practice plans I had put in place for the next day—a puzzle I had saved from a puzzle swap, a podcast episode I had saved for a long walk, a recipe I was excited to try (like the Dollywood cinnamon bread), or a book I had saved to read.

Sabbath has become a breath of fresh air for me weekly now. It’s a high priority on my calendar, and my team and I protect it as best we can. Now that I’m engaged and planning a married life with someone else, we are figuring out how to make Sabbath a practice we do together on a weekly basis, which is significantly more challenging when you have two travel calendars to deal with. But we’re figuring it out—it’s why Sabbath is a PRACTICE—you get to keep practicing!

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This is an important rhythm for me that has certainly made me spiritually stronger. Rest is a vital part of increased strength, which is why we wanted to feature it here, at the start of the summer. Many people think more about rest right now, with vacations on the horizon. So, what if we got this practice in place this summer when it is what culture is talking about anyways, and then carried it into the fall?

We have three weeks coming on Sabbath, and then we’re saving one conversation for Summer 2027: SABBATICAL. But the three ideas we’ll hit in this series—resting every day, resting every week, and resting every year—I think will inspire you and challenge you and invite you to this practice that is almost as challenging as fasting (and just as effective.)

I hope you will join us as we share TONS of resources this month (we have lists upon lists for you to watch, listen to, and read), we’ll share a Sabbath Practice Guide that will go deeper on some of these concepts and give you even more practices to consider, and we’ll have daily reflection questions to help you think this through as a person who is single, married, parenting, grandparenting, busy, lonely, bored…

Sabbath is for us all.