Finding Your 24/6 Rhythm in a 24/7 World

“In Sabbath-keeping we become more our­selves, not less.”
–Eugene Peter­son, from his fore­word to 24/6: Pre­scrip­tion for a Health­ier, Hap­pier Life by Matthew Sleeth, MD

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A decade ago, I was chief of staff of a hos­pi­tal and direc­tor of emer­gency ser­vices. Tak­ing care of sick peo­ple is good work, and I loved my job. Like many physi­cians, I was often called a worka­holic. The label didn’t sur­prise me. For many years, I worked 24-hour shifts in the emer­gency room. Through­out the early years of my career, work iden­ti­fied both what I did and who I was.

This all-consuming pas­sion for my work per­sisted until my early for­ties, when I read the Bible for the first time. That’s when I dis­cov­ered God’s answer to our always-on, 24/7 cul­ture of work, work, work.

The answer first appears in the open­ing pages of Gen­e­sis. God’s rhythm since the begin­ning of time has been 24/6—six days on, and one day off. When I began adopt­ing that rhythm, my entire life changed for the better—physically, emo­tion­ally, and spiritually.

THE WEEKLY PAUSE

What does the word “Sab­bath” mean? It sim­ply means “stop.” That’s all. The Hebrew peo­ple didn’t have names for the days of the week. There was one-day, two-day, three-day, four-day, five-day, six-day, Stop Day.

The fourth com­mand­ment says that we don’t work on Stop Day. We don’t make our sons work; we don’t make our daugh­ters work; we don’t make any­body in our house­hold work. We don’t make strangers work; we don’t make ille­gal aliens work; we don’t make min­i­mum wage employ­ees work. We don’t make any­thing work, includ­ing the cat­tle and the chicken and the sheep. We stop. We cool our jets. We just idle our engines on that day.

When my wife Nancy started teach­ing, she had a stu­dent named Clin­ton. His essay on the first day of class was three pages long. It didn’t have a comma; it didn’t have a period; it didn’t have a para­graph in it. It was a three-page, run-on sentence.

I don’t think God intended our lives to be like that paper—just one long, run-on sen­tence. The work of our life is meant to be punc­tu­ated by rest. Musi­cians talk about this. They say that it’s not the notes that make the song, but the pauses in between the notes. This rhythm is equally true for our lives.

GROUNDED IN SABBATH

The word holy first occurs in the sec­ond chap­ter of Gen­e­sis. The sev­enth day is blessed as holy because the Lord stopped and rested. Stop­ping and rest­ing are the work­ing def­i­n­i­tions of holy.

But instead of rest­ing, we move and move and don’t stop to know what we are walk­ing on. We are ungrounded. No place means much of any­thing to us. When no place is our home, then the whole earth is reduced to a com­mod­ity. The most we can be is consumers.

The Sab­bath com­mand­ments con­tained in the Old Tes­ta­ment set the worth of all things. The ground is allowed to rest every sev­enth year. The new­born calf can­not be taken imme­di­ately from its mother. The fruit tree has a right to exist in a time of war.

While I do not advo­cate the throw­ing over of civil law in favor of Old Tes­ta­ment law, I do believe in the inher­ent worth that God places in his cre­ation. Often we see no worth in what the Lord cre­ated beyond its mere util­i­tar­ian value. We talk about forests as tim­ber and flow­ers as bou­quets. Yet when God placed the trees on the earth, God said that they are pleas­ing to the eye (Gen­e­sis 2:9). God dresses the lilies of the field more lav­ishly than a king or queen (Matthew 6:28–29). God’s solil­o­quy to Job is about the mys­tery and beauty that cre­ation has beyond its use­ful­ness to humanity.

When we take Paul’s words to the Colos­sians to heart—“Everything was cre­ated through him and for him. He existed before any­thing else, and he holds all cre­ation together” (Colos­sians 1:16–17)—we real­ize that the very ground we walk on and the air we breathe are the con­stant out­pour­ing of God’s cre­ativ­ity and love.

WHAT’S MISSING MATTERS

Why in the last few decades has the Church decided to throw out the fourth com­mand­ment? Why have we dis­missed our day of rest? Which com­mand­ment are we going to throw out next?

Now, Jesus isn’t a legal­ist. Instead, he’s about the intent behind the laws. So, if the Ten Com­mand­ments say, “Don’t kill some­body,” Jesus says, “Don’t even call them a jerk.” If the Ten Com­mand­ments say, “Don’t com­mit adul­tery,” Jesus says, “Don’t even cruise the Inter­net look­ing for racy pictures.”

So what does Jesus have say about the longest of the Ten Commandments—to keep a day of rest once a week? He clar­i­fies that this is a day ded­i­cated to God, so it’s okay to feed the hun­gry. It’s okay to take care of the sick. It’s okay to go and res­cue an ani­mal. But we’re still sup­posed to “Remem­ber the Sab­bath and keep it holy.”

The Bible is about peo­ple try­ing to have a rela­tion­ship with God while exist­ing in a fallen world. Yet in our twenty-first cen­tury cul­ture, we’re not con­tent just to live in a fallen world: we’re putting rocket boost­ers on our backs to accel­er­ate our descent. And because our rela­tion­ship with God is inter­twined with how we care for cre­ation and for our global neigh­bors, when we don’t spend enough time with God, all our rela­tion­ships are adversely affected.

A day of rest coun­ter­acts this down­ward tra­jec­tory. It’s about restraint. And that restraint is needed now more than ever.

BE STILL. KNOW GOD.

For me, one of the most pro­found lines in the Bible comes from Psalm 46. God says, “Be still and know that I am God.”

As you pre­pare for your next Sab­bath, try med­i­tat­ing on this scrip­ture. Then take off one word from the end of the line, each time you say it.

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be.

Stop Day is when you’re no longer just a human doing, you’re a human being. Just be.

THE SABBATH FOR US

Sab­bath doesn’t just hap­pen. You have to pre­pare for it. The day before the Sab­bath, my wife and I always clean the house. We pay bills, answer emails, go gro­cery shop­ping, and pre­pare food so that on the Sab­bath we can truly rest.

Sab­bath morn­ing, we almost always take a long walk. Nancy reads the Bible. I take a nap. We rest in rest. If there’s an impor­tant dead­line approach­ing and it seems like we just have to get it done, we stop. We trust in God’s promise that six days of work each week is enough.

If you can’t imag­ine twenty-four hours of rest, start with four or six hours of holy rest. Stop­ping is about restraint. It’s not about doing every­thing that we can do. It’s about find­ing the peace of God that passes all understanding.

The Sab­bath was not meant to be saved by human­ity; rather, human­ity was meant to be saved by the Sab­bath. I know from first-hand expe­ri­ence. After prac­tic­ing the Sab­bath for almost a decade, I have seen how it has saved me from the dis­ease of worka­holism. It has saved count­less num­bers of my patients from the phys­i­cal, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual con­se­quences of unremit­ting stress. If prac­ticed reg­u­larly, the Sab­bath can save you, too.

Indeed, the future of our planet may very well depend upon Sab­bath rest. The 24/6 life allows us to see the earth not as an object for con­sump­tion but as a sub­ject for rela­tion­ship. It reminds us that God made the earth to meet every generation’s needs, not just one generation’s desires.

I pray that you remem­ber to open up this gift of stop­ping one day a week. I pray that you find peace in this weekly oasis of time. I pray that you will be still and that, through rest, you will come to know God. And it will be good.

Learn more about Matthew Sleeth’s orga­ni­za­tion Blessed Earth, check out their cre­ation care resources, and get involved.

Learn more about Matthew Sleeth’s new book, 24/6: Pre­scrip­tion for a Hap­pier, Health­ier Life.

Read more arti­cles like this one in the Nov 2012–Jan 2013 issue, “Hope for Eco-Activists: Dis­cov­er­ing an Envi­ron­men­tal Faith”