For the "Rest" of Us!

My friend Rob has tons of energy and when he visits he’s always looking for things to do. He even volunteers to mow the lawn. Who am I to deny him?

It takes about an hour to mow our lawn and Rob stops frequently to, as he says, “rest the mower.” The machine hardly needs a rest. Eventually, I realized that Rob mean himself: he’s the mower that needs rest.

Even Rob, with all his energy, needs rest and he knows it. What a valuable lesson Rob has for the rest of us.

In Mark’s Gospel (2:27) it reads, “Then [Jesus] said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.”

When I was a kid, all I could figure out was that the Sabbath rules prohibiting various activities on Sundays really cut into my fun. My parents weren’t all that strict about them, but some neighbourhood parents were and I found that frustrating. I think I must have felt that we were created for the sabbath. I certainly didn’t see that the sabbath was of any benefit to me or my friends. Even in those tender years I wouldn’t have thought God needed us to rest.

Now I see, now I understand, that the sabbath was created for humankind, for our benefit. The rule to rest is not a punishment, but a need we all have and that enables us to, let’s say, mow the lawn safely. Or even play.

We need sabbath-time: time to rest, time for prayer, time to be open to God’s presence in our lives. We need time for re-creation: to let our bodies, minds and souls rejuvenate. We need time for connection: to connect with God, and with one another.

For many Christians the literal understanding of this sabbath rule is that we need to honour this time on Sundays. A more literal interpretation is that sabbath is on Saturdays. But the real point is time, any time for sabbath is good. The rule is for the “rest” of us, so that we can be more present in every other aspect of our lives. So that we can live more fully, and that’s what God promises, to live life fully and abundantly.