“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10
At the end of January I spent 4 days on a personal, spiritual retreat. I approached the week as a time of sabbath, because the meaning of sabbath is rest. It was a week alone with the Lord, my Bible, and some other books. I spent a week without telephone or internet access. What did I learn or experience from this sabbath?
I was reminded that I am not indispensable. Life and ministry will go on without my direct involvement. Meetings will happen, people will make decisions and go through various experiences without my presence and input. And that’s OK. I was reminded that I can survive without “screens” and without checking my email several times a day. I enjoyed the discipline of finding other things to do instead of going online or watching another show. I took walks on the large property of this Retreat Centre. These walks through open fields and on a forest trail provided a quiet time to enjoy creation. Seeing numerous deer, hearing the birds, watching squirrels playing, listening to the quiet babbling stream added to that enjoyment. It was a wonderful reminder of God’s care for creation, and it didn’t depend on me. It was there for me to enjoy, and be reminded that God also cares for me. While I did miss the daily conversations and communication with Jane, I knew that she could contact me through the Retreat Centre office if there was an emergency. It was a reminder of the blessing of the commitment in our relationship, even if we cannot speak our love to each other each day. All of this enriched the deeper experience of sabbath, which is to rest in God’s care, to trust that he is in control and at work in our world. It doesn’t depend on me. But the purpose of sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate myself in order to have energy to work harder when I got back. The purpose of sabbath is to enjoy God, to enjoy life in general and celebrate what I can do with the gifts and abilities God has given, and to know that I am free from having to perform to a certain standard in order to be good enough. I am free, in Christ, to be all that he has made me to be. While I am thankful for several days of sabbath rest, I also know that this experience of sabbath is not limited to those few days that were set aside. I am reminded of the blessing and importance of a sabbath day every week. It is a day to set aside our activity and stop, to be reminded that it’s not about me. God is in control. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also rest from their own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest.” Hebrews 4:9-11