themselves permission to take—sab- bath time. It was hard to truly let go and step back from their good and necessary work, not only to ground their faith life in worship but also to simply rest.
Roger is a gifted, thoughtful physician. One day we were discuss- ing the effects of exhaustion on the quality of our work. Physicians are trained to work when they are bone- weary and sleep-deprived, a require- ment from the moment they begin medical school.
“I discovered in medical school,” Roger told me, “that if I saw a patient when I was tired or overworked, I would order a lot of tests. I could see the symptoms, I could recognize the possible diagnoses, but I was so exhausted I couldn’t really tell what was going on, how everything fit together. So I got in the habit of ordering a battery of tests, hop- ing they would tell me what I was missing.
GETTY IMAGES/PAM ULLMAN
ignore the signals we receive from our bone-weary souls that tell us to slow down, even stop. I was compelled to write A Life of
Being, Having, and Doing Enough (Harmony Books, 2010) because after reading and discussing my book Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest (Bantam, 1999), countless people told me it was nearly impossible to find—or to give
“But if I had an opportunity to get some sleep or go for a walk, when I saw the next patient I could rely on my intuition and experience to give me a pretty accurate reading of what was happening. If there was any uncertainty about my diagnosis, I would order a specific test to confirm or deny it. When I could take the time to listen and be present with them and their illness, I was almost always right.” We have built our lives on a ridiculous belief that if we move faster, work longer and harder (with the help of all our astonishingly swift and convenient technologies), and fix everything broken or complete every project, then we can finally say, “That is enough. Now I can rest.”
But this foolish, impossible
moment never arrives, and without permission from our culture, work- place—sadly, even our church—how
can we know it is allowed? In my work with groups small and
large, I meet so many good-hearted people who are exhausted—parents and teachers, businesspeople and vol- unteers, medical professionals and civil servants—all trying to contrib- ute to their family, their community, their world. But they feel victimized by increasing expectations, demands and requirements that destroy any possibility of finding space or ease in their daily lives for what is required of us: honoring the Sabbath.
Freedom from slavery We know the Sabbath finds its roots in Genesis. The Creator works for six days, shaping and filling the green, fluid beauty of the earth with life everywhere. On the seventh day, the Creator rests. For now, this is enough. In the Hebrew Bible, the word for this rest can literally be read, “And God exhaled.” In Deuteronomy, the Sabbath is more fully defined as a day free from work, a day that forever symbol- izes and ensures our liberation from slavery.
When the Hebrews were enslaved, they were certainly not at liberty to take a day off. When God set them free from captivity, God required the people to keep a Sabbath day holy and free from labor as a reminder that they were free men and women, not slaves. And by taking a day off, they could never become enslaved. More importantly, they could never choose to live as slaves.
“Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. For six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daugh- ter, or your male or female slave, or
For a study guide, see page 26. August 2011 21
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