On My Bookshelf: Sabbath

I'm going to start calling my book reviews "On My Bookshelf" because I'm really liking more specific categorizing as of late. So, on my bookshelf this weekend was Dan Allender's contribution to The Ancient Practices Series (I talked about the introductory book to the series here): Sabbath.

Buy it here.

Dan's book brought entirely new insight to my notions of what Sabbath was meant to be. I think growing up "remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy" simply meant to me that I should go to church, which I did quite easily, so that wasn't really pressing. Over the past five years or so it's morphed into a day free of work, loosely based on inspiration from Lauren Winner's book Mudhouse Sabbath. The Sabbath Dan describes, however, is all based on one thing: delight.

The Sabbath "is meant to be an encounter with God's delight," Dan says, and continues: "The Sabbath is the kind of delight that leads to life" (p. 12). God didn't necessarily need rest on that 7th day. Rather, what he wanted was to delight in his creation--a perfect creation, at that. Dan adds that the Sabbath is a day where we pretend we are living in God's perfect creation--completely immersed in his kingdom come--and delight in it. It is a day when we set aside the things that kill and haunt us and fully embrace only the things that give us life--the things that are, consequently, holy and of God.

In reading this I was overwhelmed that one single day could be full of such hope--it felt like a gift that I was undeserving of. But Dan is sure to emphasize, too, that it is God's commandment that we celebrate the Sabbath. It is his gift to us and he commands that we receive it. I mean, if I have to.

Not that it's easy. It is definitely a spiritual discipline and a daily practice, especially when school beckons. And not just school--work, life, my mind... truthfully, that will be the hardest thing to set aside, because it's often my mind that's inviting the death into my life. Ooh, that's touchy. Aaanyway, Dan encouraged the practice of ritual Sabbaths durning the week--times that remind us of both what has passed and what is to come--so I am enlisting. I'm calling them bookend Sabbaths, because they will start my day and finish it. And sometimes they might involve books. But really, here's what I'm committing to: the first and last hour of my day will be times of Sabbath. They will be filled with delight, they will be filled with life, and they will taste so, so good.

In Progress,

Lacy