Session One – Sabbath
Leviticus 26:2
You shall keep my sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.
Exodus 16:22-26
On the sixth day they gathered twice as much food, two omers apiece. When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy
sabbath to the Lord; bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning.’” So they put it aside until morning, as Moses commanded them; and it did not become foul, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is a sabbath, there will be none.”

Nate Stuckey is the Director of the Farminary project at Princeton Seminary and a former professor of mine at Princeton Seminary. Nate wrote his dissertation (and a great book) on sabbath as both a gift from God and a challenge. He shares about how he has asked groups in the past to keep a 7-day time diary, what you do, for how long, and so on. After completing the time diary, take note of what is there and what is not there. For many people, rest is no where to be found. I, like you, am not the least bit surprised by this. Rest has come to be thought of as an after-thought, something to do if I get everything else done. It is most likely the first thing to go if our calendars fill up with soccer games, work meetings, weddings, family events, and time to catch up with friends.

The second thing Nate notices in his research is that most people when invited to rest find that rest actually makes them more anxious, not less. If our day and our lives and our culture are defined by all that we do and accomplish, then its no wonder we find it unhelpful to pause from the work and accomplishment. Everything around us tells us we are not doing enough, we are not enough, we have not seen enough, we have not accomplished enough. So when we stop doing, we become anxious about not being or doing enough.

And that’s where sabbath comes in. Sabbath is a gift from God, it’s a means of experiencing God’s grace. Like all the spiritual practices we will talk about in this series, this isn’t simply something you must do to get on God’s good side, rather it is something you can do to experience God. Sabbath is indeed rest, its also a way of looking out for God, for placing trust that God is at work when you are resting, for noticing how God is at work in the world when you slow down.

Something to try:
- Keep a time diary – what are you spending your time doing?
- Put sabbath rest on your calendar first, before anything else. Make a
promise to keep it.

Discussion Questions For Connect Group
- What do you struggle to “put aside until morning time” like the Israelites were commanded to do?
- How do you (or others) define you by what you do or accomplish?
- Why would God command sabbath?
- What about sabbath rest feels impossible to you?
- What about sabbath rest feels hopeful to you?