The Practice of Sabbath

On Mondays the Pool Party lays low. Trust me, there's plenty of activity, but it is on Monday that we take our Sabbath. We're pretty rigorous with it. We hardly ever answer the phone, I rarely ever check my email. We do go out (a day at home without going out is like a trip to the ice cream store without getting Superman ... unbearable!), but we lay low. Some people think of Monday as a family day. We do almost always spend lots of time together as a family on Monday, but I think of it as much more than that. Sabbath is a day of rest and recreation. It is a time to remember that God is God and we are not, and that, while we're important, God is perfectly able to run the world without us.

Like I said, we're very attentive to our practice of sabbath. Every now and then I feel guilty about this, because I think, "Hey, not everyone does or even can do sabbath like I'm able to." Do you see where I'm coming from? I mean, every Monday, as a pastor, I have the privilege of unplugging. Not everyone else can do that on their Saturdays or Sundays or whatever. So sometimes I have felt guilty. Of course, the fact that people don't doesn't mean that people shouldn't. But there's more to it than that. I've come to realize that the practice of sabbath is critically important for pastors. You see, pastors have this unique vocational hazard (as Eugene Peterson would put it) - their in the religion management business. That means that we face a temptation to believe that God is under our control - that He'll show up when we tell him to, that He's bound to meet our expectations. This temptation, I think, is fairly peculiar to pastors. Maybe some others, like doctors, face something similar. Anyway, given this temptation, is it critically essential then that pastors practice sabbath. We need it for our souls.