dream-awakener

living a balanced life

"Everyone wants it. Few achieve it. It's the Holy Grail in the new world of work. But is it even something that any of us can have? We asked 10 business leaders and thinkers to describe their journeys toward balance." fast company

for me my motto has been to divert daily, withdraw weekly, maintain monthly, abandon annuallly. some of my most favorite quotes on sabbath come from eugene peterson.

in working the angles he says, “Sabbath means quit. Stop. Take a break. Cool it. The word itself has nothing devout or holy in it. It is a word about time, denoting our nonuse of it, what we usually call WASTING time.”

he talks about the two biblical versions of the sabbath commandment, how the commands are identical, but the reasons to keep the sabbath differ. in exodus the reason to keep the sabbath is because God kept it. the deuteronomy reason for keeping the sabbath was just to take a day of. (duet. 5:15) while the israelites were in egypt, they went about 400 years without a day off. as a result they simply became hands, work units. not people made in the image of God, but equipment for making bricks and building pyramids. he goes on to say:

“The Biblical idea of the Sabbath is about praying and playing. It not like the Puritans Sabbath that eliminates playing altogether and it’s not like the secular Sabbath that eliminates prayer altogether. The true Sabbath combines prayer and play and makes the day more complete. I have found that it replenishes the soul. God wanted us to see the importance of rest and replenish so much, that He commanded it, though He has not commanded which day.”

one definition he gives for a sabbath is: “Uncluttered time and space to distance ourselves from the frenzy of our own activities so we can see what God has been and is doing. If we do not regularly quit work for one day a week, we take ourselves far too seriously. The moral sweat pouring off our brows blinds us to the primal action of God in and around us.”

posted by J.R. Woodward @ 2:41 PM