How to do Family Sabbath
Earlier this year we looked at the Ten Commandments. The fourth one says “You must be careful to remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you” (Deut. 5v12). Sabbath is not something we Hong Kongers do very well. We’re a frenetically busy city, always on the go. The idea of slowing down feels like a waste of time. But as John Ortberg has noted ‘Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. We must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives”. What does it look like to carve out time each week to rest and rejoice– the two key components of Sabbath and healthy soul? Here are a couple of ways we’re trying to Sabbath well in our family.
1. Find a weekly rhythm: Find a weekly rhythm that works for you and your family – preferably one that includes two or three meals – that you can prioritize above all other commitments. Generally the weekend is good and even better to include Sunday Family Worship. You may want to set aside Saturday evening until Sunday lunch; or Saturday midnight to Sunday midnight. For some families, Friday evening until Saturday lunch time may work better. For our family – because Sunday is a workday and I’m often spending Saturday afternoon finishing up preparing for Sunday – our Sabbath starts at 5pm on Friday evening and ends with lunch on Saturday. This has become a treasured highlight in our week for the whole family.
2. Set that time aside to Rest and Rejoice: For our family, this is one of our highest priorities and we seldom allow other things to come in the way. On Friday evenings we make dinner together, we light candles at then dinner table and we pray and ask God to be particularly presence in our home and hearts during the Sabbath period. When we wake up on Saturday morning, the kids climb into our bed and we have a short family devotion, by looking at Scripture and praying together. The rest of the morning, we do things that fill our hearts with appreciation for God and each another, we put on good music, play family games, read a book, spend time in prayer, maybe go for a walk through town or on the mountain or go to the beach. We may cook a big breakfast or go out for coffee and egg-tarts. It’s not all glamourous though. Sometimes the kids still argue with each other. Interruptions happen and things do still go wrong and sometimes we can be grumpy with each other. But we try our best to carve out some time to revitalize our hearts and souls, by prioritizing Christ and each other.
This also doesn’t mean that others can’t be included: In the Scriptures Sabbath was meant to be lived out in community. Sometimes we’ll have friends over, or the kids will have a friend to stay over for the night. We may invite someone that doesn’t have family. It’s great to include others in the blessing and joy that we experience on Sabbath. The goal is to be grateful to be alive in God’s world and grateful for one-another; to rest and rejoice.
3. Turn off all technology: This is my favourite part of Sabbath, turning off phones iPads, computers, TVs. For 18 hours each week, we disconnect from our digital world – and it’s wonderful! In our day this seems like an impossibility, and many of us don’t realize just how addicted we are to technology. One of the challenges for those of us working from home is that work-life and home-life get blurred into one. And the temptation is to always keep working, checking emails or the stock market, or the news or social media. Sabbath calls us to rest by detaching from the technological world and remembering what it means to be human apart from the pulls and demands of modern life. In the Scripture, Sabbath-rest is a command, not a suggestion. Very few people treat the other commands – such as not murdering, committing adultery, or stealing – the same way we treat this command. And yet it is given to us for our good and our flourishing.
I recently heard J.I. Packer describe the brilliance of the Puritan Christians. Part of what made them so influential, he said, was that they lived at a pace that allowed them to think deeply about the important things in life. For busy Hong Kongers, it is difficult to think deeply about the important things in life. As a result many people – even Christians – can be wildly successful but are spiritually shallow and superficial, even after years of being a Christian. Prioritizing one day a week (or less), to slow down and prioritize the important things in life might help us reconnect with God, and each other.
kevin
If you want to find out more about this: consider listening to this podcast series (Fight Hurry,
End Hustle) or reading Jon Mark Comer’s book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.