246 by Matthew Sleeth

Author:Matthew Sleeth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Personal Growth
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2012-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

Rest, Renewal, and Reverence

How does one balance a world formed in seven days, generations, and a week? My experience has shown that this happens best on the Sabbath. Believers of old said that if everyone kept the Sabbath, time itself would cease. The river of time would freeze, and we would see God.

My Saturday “Stop Days” launched me on a journey toward the three Rs of Sabbath: rest, renewal, and reverence. In Sabbath keeping, we rest from more than our labors. We rest from the tyranny of the urgent, the staggering precipice of eternity, and the mundane workweek.

In the Sabbath’s renewal, we catch a glimpse of the divine. And our response to the divine is reverence.

Rest, renewal, and reverence all take time. And if time is money, then how much time will a lifetime of Sabbath keeping cost? In what turns out to be another paradox, it may not cost anything. Sabbath keeping may be free, and it’s been scientifically studied.

In The Blue Zones, author Dan Buettner looked for groups around the world who lived longer and healthier lives. The groups he identified lived about a dozen years longer on average than the general population. All the groups did the kinds of things you’d expect. They didn’t smoke or eat a diet high in animal fat. They walked a lot. They valued family and relationships.

In the United States, the community that met Buettner’s criteria was in Loma Linda, California—the Seventh-day Adventists. Adventists are Sabbath keepers. On average, the cohort in Loma Linda lives about a dozen years longer than the rest of America. If you multiply the number of Sabbaths they observe per year by their average lifespan and divide that figure by 365, you will end up with about a dozen years. In other words, the number of extra years they live is roughly equivalent to the number of days they spend in Sabbath keeping. It may be coincidence, but the Bible hints at a cause-and-effect relationship between keeping the Sabbath and living a long life. Living 24/7 is life draining; living 24/6 is life giving.

Teach us to number our days. As Naomi’s story illustrates, life is unpredictable. We should always be at peace with God. The cares of the world want to drag us away from that peace. Observing a Sabbath ensures that at the very worst, we are never more than six days away from a holy perspective. Sabbath keeping gives us the time to set priorities—for a day, for a week, and for generations.

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