So long, endless potential!

Sabbath 3.0 - rest for a smartphone world

Time is a funny thing. Now more so than ever, I think. Or, more accurately, time is the same but our experience of it has become a little… murky?

For most of history, time was necessarily ordered. When it was harvest time you harvested and when it was planting time you planted. At some times of the year there was plenty and at other times lack. Some seasons necessitated hard work and others tended more to rest. And when it was dark it was dark.  

But then we invented the light bulb. And tractors, refrigerators, computers, air-conditioning. But at first the computers stayed on our desk at work and the shops were closed on Sundays and the family lined up to take turns with the corded phone and you waited for your program to come on the TV at 7:30pm each Tuesday.

But then supercomputers creeped their way into our hands and pockets and work follows us even to the toilet (if we let it) and if the shops are closed, Amazon is open and you can watch reality TV at any hour of the day and the world is altogether different. 

I think tech advancements have done beautiful things in the world and I don’t wish to live in the 1950s (certainly not the 1850s…) but we cannot be ignorant of the way smart phones in particular have changed our lives. Particularly our conception of time. Life does not march along in an ordered rhythm in the same way it did. In our experience time has become an amorphous blob. Every moment is packed with endless possibility and potential, it can be shaped into whatever we want it to be and its absolutely exhausting.

At any given moment we could choose to be texting a friend, watching Love is Blind, reading Shakespeare, scrolling the news, planning our week, listening to a podcast about Secularism, responding to a work email, doing a New York Times puzzle, learning to speak French, discovering the latest life hacks, doing a uni reading, crafting a reel and watching a cooking video. And that’s without even getting off our phone. How is a person to know what to do against the endless tide of possibility and potential?

Rest in a Smartphone World

I do not have answers to all of this. But I do know one thing that helps.

One of the gifts of Sabbath into a world such as this is that it gives us again a separation in time. Every moment is not the same, time has distinction. There are days to work and a day to rest.

For the ancient Israelites Sabbath was to be a Holy day. The word holy means to be ‘set apart.’ There were holy…. Growing up we had the normal dishes we used each day and then the china set that was ‘set apart’ for special use. If the china was out, the meal was different. We treated those plates with special respect and I lived in terror of shattering one of the crystal glasses.

Sabbath is to be a holy day, which does not mean that it’s a day in which we should only sing hymns and read the Bible. It means it’s a day set apart from the rest, a day set apart for God, and so we should conduct ourselves differently on that day.

I think God is just so beautifully kind. There are a few times in the Bible where he asks us to give him something and then he gives it back to us as a gift. One of them is the peace offering described in Leviticus 3 and 7. In this particular sacrifice when people came to offer a gift to God the fat and some internal organs were burned then and God gave the best of the animal back to the people to have a huge barbecue with.

I think Sabbath is a bit like this. It is a day we set apart for God and he could ask us to do anything on this day! But he commands us, on this day we give to him, to stop, rest, delight and worship. He gives it back to us as gift. God is so beautifully, outrageously generous.

We must remember, that Sabbath is not a ‘treat yo self’ day where we focus on self-indulgence and consumerism. It is not another day of endless potential. Instead we rest and delight from a posture of contentment and gratitude, receiving good things as a gift from God.  Remembering that God himself is our ultimate joy and delight.

No Oil Changes on Christmas

So how do we make Sabbath a day ‘set apart’ from the others?

The idea of marking a day as holy might conjure up lots of intimidating things in our imagination, but Jesus makes it very clear that this is not a day for performative religiosity and stringent rules. He rejected the extra laws that had people added on top of the Torah. Marking the day as holy does not mean we’re doing Bible study for 18 hours straight.

I think we still do know how to mark days as ‘set apart,’ for we still have a few of them in our calendar. Christmas most of all! We plan and prepare for Christmas. We look forward to it. And then when the day dawns we postpone sadness and worry if we possibly can and we choose to celebrate.

If someone were to ask you to help them change the oil on their car on Christmas you would probably think that was very strange – there are many days to change oil and Christmas is not one of them. It is not a day like all the others.

Sabbath is kind of like this – a day set apart for special use that you plan for, prepare for and look forward to. It’s like a mini Christmas every week - without the consumerism and stress.

On Sabbath we live a little bit differently.

Practically this has looked like a few things for me. Of course, we don’t work on the Sabbath or seek to be productive. I turn my phone off and put it away, if at all possible. I avoid shopping on the Sabbath, remembering that I have all I need and taking a break from wanting. (I am not perfect at this and usually convince myself that op shopping is different…)

We also mark the beginning of Sabbath with prayers and the lighting of a candle as people who practice Sabbath do all around the world. On the precious occasion that we are free on Friday night we begin Sabbath at dinner time and will add breaking bread and drinking wine into our Sabbath prayers. But usually we will light a candle at breakfast on Saturday and read Sabbath prayers from the book of Celtic Daily Prayer. It sets the tone for the whole day and its lovely.

Having distinction in time has not been natural to me. I tended toward constantly being in ‘work mode,’ but the reality is none of us are robots. It’s not possible to constantly work. So in truth I was constantly procrastinating and wasting time on silly things and scrolling on my phone. I mean I still do that, but less.

I used to do bad work and then bad rest. Learning to have good rest has also taught me how to work well. My brain can focus because it knows a break is coming. And I have learned the self-discipline of choosing not to think about certain things at certain times. It’s made a huge difference.

I still wrestle with the way time comes at me in an amorphous blob of exhausting potential, but it’s become less unruly. Once a week a full 24 hours is set apart for the Lord. I go with the grain of the universe and slip into the flow of God-ordered time.

It’s wonderful.

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Sabbath in the Ordinary

Here are three more quick thoughts on what it has looked like for us to practice Sabbath, not in the abstract but in a normal life. I hope they might help!

Sabbath is not just for introverts or people who like poetry

Most people who are talking and writing about Sabbath at the moment are introverts and do not have young children. They would speak about sitting on the couch drinking wine and reading poetry and as little as I want to do that you can imagine how much fun that sounded to my husband… (not at all fun…)

The first time I heard an extrovert with young children share about Sabbath it was like a breath of fresh air! When you plan Sabbath don’t work against the grain of how God made you, work with it. There’s so much room for you to be who you are before God. If staying at home all day makes you want to weep – don’t. If you love seeing friends on the weekend – plan to spend Sabbath with people who fill your cup. If you love sitting on the couch reading poetry and drinking wine, then by all means do that. Plan ways of resting, delighting and worshipping that align with who he has made you to be and breathe new life into your bones. 

‘Can I have it on Sabbath mummy?’

We want Sabbath to be a day of celebration and rest for Wes too. He’s only two but we want him to understand the specialness of the day and begin to enjoy the rhythm of Sabbath from a young age. We limit his screen time, but he knows he usually gets to watch a movie ‘on Sabbath.’ And he loves it. He’s taken to asking for all kinds of good things ‘on Sabbath.’ He asked for an ice cream once and after I said no, not now, he asked if he could have one ‘on Sabbath.’ Um, yes! I try to say yes to these cute requests as much as possible so that he marks it as a day to look forward to.

He also loves lighting the candle during our Sabbath prayers. His understanding of Sabbath is of course limited but I think he is enjoying it and growing.

Get yourself a Sabbath phone

My little family does not all stay together on Saturdays and since I have a toddler I like to be contactable just in case. I know, I know, for most of human history people have not been perpetually contactable, but alas I’m a modern woman. Knowing Dave can call me if he needs to, helps me relax and be more at peace. But I don’t want to use my smart phone! So I have fired up an old flip phone and put a pay-as-you-go SIM into it (Aldi had the best plan I found) and its been just perfect. We call it our ‘Sabbath phone’ and I think it will have uses for no-tech times beyond Sabbath days.

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I think perhaps I might write one more post on Sabbath. If there’s anything Sabbath related you would like me to share about or any questions you have I’d love to include them in this last post so please let me know!

May the grace and peace of God be upon you this week.

Rachel