Being Sabbath

I'm losing count of things I've heard or read about Sabbath in the last few years.  While Sabbath is far from a new concept, it seems the recent resurgence of talk about Sabbath has coincided with the rise of the minimalism movement.  Marie Kondo talks about ridding oneself of things that are not useful, or don't "spark joy."  Margareta Magnusson brought awareness to the practice of "Swedish Death Cleaning," or decluttering so that your heirs don't have so much to deal with upon your demise.  The Minimalists, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, operate from the thesis that the less stuff we have, the more meaning we can find in our lives.  This is a spiritual concept--the more stuff we keep for ourselves, the less we have to share with others, the greater our carbon footprint, the further we find ourselves from God/our spirituality ("it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God"--Luke 18:25, NIV).  

In John Mark Comer's book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, he describes his family's weekly Sabbath practice as not only refraining from work, but from acquiring more things that demand their time and divert their attention from drawing closer to God.  Rich Mullins put it like this:  "The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the Giver of all good things" ("If I Stand," Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth, ©1988).  Comer refers to Sabbath as a time of filling.  Our week's work, what we do as a job and what we do as part of life, are emptying.  What we do six days of the week empties us of energy, of joy, of money, of time, and sometimes of humanity.  The Sabbath refills us.  The day's inactivity isn't laziness, it's replenishment.  We practice minimalism on our calendar, and we're restored--mind, body, and spirit.  

Have you ever planned a perfect day?  A day of sleeping in, eating a leisurely breakfast that someone else prepares, relaxing in the park with the book you've been dying for years to read, sipping iced tea (or something a little stronger), lying under your favorite tree for a short afternoon nap before dinner at your favorite restaurant, and ending the evening with the movie you've seen 20 times and will never tire of.  Imagine you've scheduled that day, and at 6 a.m. your boss calls to say you have to come in to work until 10, because their opener didn't show up.  There go the sleep and the breakfast, but you can still salvage the day.  At 9:30 you start getting calls from two friends.  You let them go to voicemail, but as you're leaving work, you check in, and have several angry messages from both, each complaining about something the other did.  Another call comes in as you're listening, and you answer, knowing you won't get a moment's peace unless you give each friend a few minutes and a shoulder to cry on.  By the time you settle things between the two, it's nap time, but you're so riled up that sleep is impossible.  The day ends with a pint of Ben & Jerry's, YouTube cat videos, and another call from each of your friends asking what you did all day.

You intended to have a Sabbath, and it was taken from you.  I'm not going to say you shouldn't have answered the phone.  I'm not going to say you shouldn't have been a good team player or let your boss strongarm you into working on your day off.  I'm not going to say that you shouldn't have been the peacemaker between your friends.  I'm not even going to say that you should have settled for only half a pint of ice cream.  I was talking to a friend this morning, and realized that someone else took their Sabbath from them.  And I wondered how many times I had deprived someone of their Sabbath because of my demands on their time, or something I've said that diverts their attention from the things that fill them, mentally, physically, or spiritually.  Or how many times I had been the one doing the emptying.  The former keeps the needle where it is; the latter moves the needle in the negative direction.

Can we be Sabbath for someone else?  Can we be the one who helps fill someone with energy, joy, time, and good thoughts?  Can we move the needle in the positive direction?  It isn't enough just to leave someone as you found them--we should make it our mission to leave the people we encounter better than we found them.  Let's energize, encourage, and enhearten those we come in contact with.  Let's help each other simplify life by not adding unnecessary complications.  And when someone seems close to empty, let's find ways to fill them with light and life.