The concept of rest is not a new one. There are a myriad of helpful books that have been written especially in recent years to help us engage with this practise.

Like any habit, discipline or practise rest operates on so many levels and too often can become something that we observe on the surface but never engage with on a deeper level.

One of the ways that rest was built into God’s people was the Sabbath. Sabbath was and is a biblical injunction, a reminder to the people of God that they were no longer slaves but people who were free. God wanted to remind His people that He was in control and they weren’t – not in a lording it over them kind of way but in a “the pressures off, I’ve got this kind of way.”

And deep down that is the major reason why we need to Sabbath, why we need to rest.

Many of us believe that we can make things happen through our hard work. If we can do enough hours, pack in enough activity then we will be able to achieve or become what we hoped (whatever that is). That is a subtle, and sometimes not so subtle way, of declaring that we are the masters of our own destiny and that we are the gods of our lives. In the end this way of living our lives leaves us enslaved to activity and work.

Sabbath, in contrast, is a reminder that the world doesn’t depend on us, that our effort is not the driver of how things go. Yes, God partners with us and yes we work with Him, but the source is Him, not us.

A few years ago I caught the concept of Sabbath. I began to realise that working all the time was a declaration that I didn’t trust God with my life and my stuff. Aware that I definitely didn’t want to do that I decided to take Sabbath seriously.

However, Sabbath isn’t simply a 24 hour period where we don’t work. It’s a period where we engage with rest, rest that is focused on the Father, rest that remembers that He is God and we are not. I don’t think we need to be prescriptive in how that happens but it is important that we engage.

So, today I would encourage each of us to tale our rest as seriously as we take our work. Let’s engage in our rest, in the Sabbath. Let’s declare it doesn’t depend on us but Him.