Adventist hospital didn’t deliver babies on Sabbath and she didn’t know what she was going to do, since she had already pre- registered at this hospital. I assured her we would have delivered the baby whenever it chose to come, including Sabbath. We do good on Sabbath, because we carry on Jesus’ ministry.


But we are also the broken who need healing—the special healing that comes from stopping (a meaning of the Hebrew word Shabbat) what we are doing and devoting ourselves to rest, worship, and fellowship. When my wife was working in one Adventist hospital as a nurse,


she and her colleagues were told to do minimal care on Sabbath. She couldn’t do that. Instead, she would say to each patient, “Today is a special day for me; it is my Sabbath. What can I do extra for you today to make your day special?” She also found that if she worked every Sabbath, she suffered from the loss of her own experience of rest, worship, and Christian fellowship. Years ago, a researcher in the Adventist health study told


a group of pastors that although virtually all categories of Adventists live longer on the average, Adventist pastors do not. I don’t know if this is still true. But could it be that the necessary work pastors do every Sabbath keeps them from the experience of true rest—and the benefits, maybe even longer life, that come from it? What, then, are the essential elements of the Sabbath


experience that might make a difference in the way we live the other six days of each week? We might make a long list, but I will mention only three. First, both Genesis 2:1-3 and Exodus 20:8-11 emphasize


remembering our Creator. Tis involves reflection and worship. We remind ourselves that we are not simply naked apes but are God’s children, who are not alone in the world. When we look at the second giving of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, we remember that this God is not only our Creator, but also our loving Redeemer, who led his children out of bondage. In the Old Testament, the exodus from Egypt is the great symbol of God’s salvation, and this second giving of the law links Sabbath to the exodus and salvation. Second, Sabbath involves a cessation of the normal working


activities of life. Walter Brueggemann puts it this way: “On the Sabbath: You do not have to do more. You do not have to sell more. You do not have to control more. You do not have to know more. You do not have to have your kids in ballet or soccer. You do not have to be the youngest or most beautiful. You do not have to score more.”3


Tis cessation is not a blank nothingness, but a Spirit-filled


awareness that we are more than what we produce, achieve, or accomplish. It is the freedom to be, without “having to do.” Tird, Sabbath involves community. We see in both Exodus


and Deuteronomy that the Sabbath experience includes not only the entire household, including the slaves, but also the foreigner and the stranger. It is not a private experience.


Determining What’s Right and Wrong In light of this, let’s get back to our original question. How does this Sabbath experience make a difference in what is right or wrong on the other days of the week? What is right or wrong to do on Wednesday if I have experienced Sabbath? 1. Te Sabbath experience keeps us from both pride and


despair. An essential part of it is remembering the Creator, who rested on the seventh day of creation. Te good news that we have a Creator reminds us that we are neither masters of the universe (this realization is an antidote to pride) nor are we alone (this understanding is an antidote for despair). Te Sabbath experience gives us a humble confidence that carries us through the entire week.4 2. Te Sabbath experience reminds us that we are more than


what we achieve and acquire, freeing us from the rat race and the need for endless consumption. It is amazing how easily we can become obsessed with achievement. In early elementary school, my youngest grandson found a computer game called cookie clicker. It was very simple. You clicked on the target, and you got cookies—not treats you could eat, just pictures on a screen. But the faster you clicked, the more cookies you got. My grandson became obsessed. When you clicked enough, each click would give you 10, or 100, or even 1000 cookies. You could save your cookies at night and start in again the next day. Every day we would get a count. One day he was so excited that he was up to 43 trillion cookies! A few days later, I asked him how many cookies he was up to, and he told me he had stopped playing. When I asked him why, he replied, “It got boring!” Our obsessive quests to acquire and achieve more always do. Sabbath rest frees us from the relentless need to produce. I once attended a management seminar and learned a lot about


making the best use of my time, but I had real trouble with the teacher’s basic perspective on life. He boiled it down to a formula (Ti + Ta = $), which reads that time plus talent equals money. Tis man proposed that getting the most out of life means maximizing your time to make more money. What a different perspective from the late Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel, who wrote in his 1951 book: “We usually think that the


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