Sabbath: Resting and Playing

I was standing in 18 inches of water the other day, watching my 2-year-old daughter navigate down a water slide at Great Wolf Lodge, when I had a revelation about Sabbath. It was an odd moment for spiritual insight, there in the midst of noisy kids and crashing water, but nonetheless, it was clear as day.

Maggie would slide down, crash into my arms at the water’s edge, and toddle to her feet. I would immediately start guiding her towards the stairs, and she – consistently – would resist. She didn’t want to head straight to the steps, to slide again. She just wanted to wander in the water for a moment, and in her own measure of time, she’d find her way back to the steps, back to slide, to repeat the process again.

Inside, I was growing frustrated. What was her problem? In my mind, there was a very simple equation: slide = fun, therefore, to maximize fun, she needed to maximize her trips down the slide. Didn’t she realize that if she went straight back to the steps she’d be able to pack in far more trips down the slide, and thereby have more fun? Her lack of efficient time-management steadily and unconsciously irritated me.

Maggie is a strong little person. Some might even say willful. As I tried to push her, rush her, hurry her along, she just simply refused, brushing off my hand, continuing in her easy, meandering way. On that day, her strength was just what my soul needed. Eventually I realized the absurdity of trying to hurry her back to slide. I realized that she enjoyed the water as much as the slide; there was no part of the experience that was more fun than any other. She hasn’t yet inherited my restless hurry, my blind efficiency, and so she’s having a lot more fun.

Recently, in my family, we’ve been trying hard to intentionally Sabbath a bit more. Not simply a day when I don’t go into work, but where we, together, intentionally lay down duties and chores, enjoy one another, enjoy food, enjoy time. We’ve quickly learned that we’re novices, and resting is hard work. I think we’ve also noticed an ever-so-slight shift in the way we see our world as a result.

This particular moment was just such a window. I was working at the water park – measuring life in terms of efficiency. Maggie was resting and playing. Once it dawned on me that it didn’t matter how many trips she made, I was suddenly free to enjoy the moment much more. Suddenly I was present with Maggie in a new way. Moments earlier, I was a step removed, judging, coaching, measuring. After that, I was just being, able to notice and participate in her joyful life in a new way.

I find myself thinking about that moment a lot. We live our whole lives under the gun, trying to measure up to the expectations of bosses and co-workers, friends, neighbors and family members. We measure efficiency and we measure bank accounts, and we never feel like we’ve got enough to satisfy ourselves or others. Sabbath is a moment when we pause and refuse that relentless drive. It reminds us that we are creatures under the rule of the Creator, who has graciously given us every gift, every moment, every good thing. Sabbath should revolutionize our minds, moving us from a posture of achieving to receiving. Like a creeping vine, it should spread a different way of being throughout our days, enabling us to breathe easy knowing that our whole lives are a gift of grace.

In the book of Hebrews, the author describes a “rest that remains for the people of God.” He goes on to give a detailed account of how Jesus, through his life, death, resurrection and ascension, has achieved that rest for us. Apart from Jesus, life is a wrestling match with flesh and sin – a hopeless conflict that will ultimately defeat us because we can never measure up. But because of Jesus, we’re not demanded to do, we can rest in the done. We can rest in the fact that his work is finished.

And that’s not a clinical, abstract reality. It’s a flesh-and-blood reality. It affects the way we work and rest now, because we do so with the knowledge that the pressure is off. We’re not measured by the size of our bank accounts, our rank at the office, or the number of times we make it up and down a water slide. Our lives are hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:23), and there is no better reason to rest, play, and breathe easy.