Last Sabbath

Today was our last Sabbath while on the Race, although hopefully not my last for the rest of my life! But before I share about my day, I want to share why Sabbath is such an important part of our life.

The Race has given us many teachings on the importance of Sabbath, so I’ll be pulling from all of them. The example to rest was given, by God Himself, as soon as the world was created, and the command to rest was put 4th on the Ten Commandments.

Did God need to rest after creating the world and everything in it? No. For an infinitely powerful and creative God, He could have done everything with a snap of His fingers, and honestly, how He did choose to do it wasn’t much more complicated (except in the case of humans). So why did He take 6 days to work and 1 to rest? For our example, and our example alone!

What about its placement in the Ten Commandments? A fun fact about it’s placement is that it kind of acts like a bridge between the commands to honor God and the commands to honor those around us. If we don’t obey that command, it will affect our ability to reach out to God and respect others.

What even is the Sabbath? The Sabbath is a day to rest and put God first. It’s a day where we’re not supposed to do work, and we’re supposed to seek God’s face with special intentionality. A lot of people refuse to do anything that feels like work (with the exception of spiritual disciplines) and take a break from their phones.

The World Race sets up rules for the Sabbath that are both strict and fluid. They set aside a whole day to rest, and this is something that is nonnegotiable. Roughly every 7 days, we get a day to rest. But it’s fluid in the sense of what counts as rest.

For example, leaving base for any reason, at any time, for any length of time, is not restful to me, so I absolutely refuse to go anywhere on Sabbath. But I can still write a blog, hand wash my laundry, and read all day long!

Those things might not be restful to other people, but they are to me! Other people might go sit at a coffee shop, go to church, or run 5 miles, because that’s what’s restful to them.

Now, you have to draw a line between entertaining yourself and being restful, because Sabbath isn’t a day off. It’s a day to rest yourself for whatever comes next and fill yourself with God!

I highly recommend taking a Sabbath once a week, and before you say, “I’m just too busy.” Remember that God literally designed us to need to rest. When you do your research about the Sabbath, you’ll find just how necessary it is to functioning well!

So, this more turned into a pitch for the Sabbath, but that’s probably a good thing, because I didn’t do much this Sabbath (exactly what I’m supposed to do!).

I slept in, read my Bible, journaled, played chess, read books, lay in my tent for hours in blissful solitude, played with my Rubik’s Cube, and celebrated my friend’s birthday! That’s an example of Sabbath, and my last one on the Race.