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There is a strange, phantom sensation that happens when you try to stop moving after walking at a brisk pace for a long time. You sit down, but your legs are still humming. Your heart is still beating to the tempo of the trail you just left behind.
I felt that exact phantom humming over the last month. Coming into this sabbatical, I knew intellectually that I was stepping away to rest. But during those first days, every time I sat still, every time I read a book just because it was beautiful rather than because I needed to preach it on Sunday, a quiet, insidious voice whispered in the back of my mind: “Shouldn’t you be doing something? What is all this unproductivity costing you?” The guilt of unproductive rest is real. It turns out that stepping off the treadmill doesn’t automatically turn off the engine in your chest.
When we read Exodus 20, we usually treat the Commandments like a grocery list of distinct, moral rules. And while different groups number them differently, our Rule Number One is “No other gods.” “No idols” is Rule Number Two. “Remember the Sabbath” is Rule Number Four. But if you look closely, there is a thread that holds them all together.
To have “no other gods” means refusing to give your ultimate loyalty to anything that demands your soul in exchange for your safety.
To build “no idols” means refusing to carve out a miniature god made in the image of your own anxiety.
And to “remember the Sabbath” is the physical, bodily proof that you actually believe the first two. Sabbath is the line in the sand where we stop worshiping the idol of our own production.
Why does this make it onto the tablets, in the top four? We have to remember where the people of Israel had just come from. Egypt was not merely a geographic location on a map; Egypt was an economy. It was a totalizing worldview where human worth was measured entirely in mud and straw, tallied daily by the number of bricks produced.
On Pharaoh’s calendar, there was no seventh day. There was no afternoon siesta. There was no pause for delight, no moment to stop and look out over the Nile and say, “This is very good.” In the brickyards, you had no value as a human being created in the image of God; you only had value as a unit of labor.
- If you slowed down, you were broken.
- If you stopped, you were disposable.
So when God led these newly freed slaves out into the desert wilderness and spoke from the thunder of Mount Sinai, saying, “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy,” God was not adding a burdensome religious duty to their calendar. God was performing an act of radical political and spiritual liberation. God was dismantling that whole economy.
It must have been deeply jarring to stop. But God was telling a traumatized, exhausted people: you are no longer Egypt. You are no longer in the brickyard. Time does not belong to Pharaoh. And your right to exist on this earth is not something you have to earn with your sweat.
The painful truth, of course, is that we never really left Egypt.
We just rebranded it.
- We call it “hustle.”
- We call it “productivity.”
- We call it “being responsible,”
- or “keeping up,”
- or just “being good at our roles.”
We live in a culture that has internalized Pharaoh’s whip, convincing us that if we aren’t constantly generating, managing, achieving, or staying available, our lives will unravel. I felt the weight of that internal whip even while on sabbatical.
And what happens when our bodies and minds inevitably crack under that strain: Egypt sells us the remedy.
We are offered an endless array of quick fixes to manage the consequences — illness, stress, disconnection, joylessness — of grind culture.
- Drink this energy beverage to wake up,
- take this pill to fall asleep, pop this supplement to focus,
- try this biohack,
- download this app,
- buy this sleep tracker,
- order these oils and crystals.
We reach for quick fixes to numb the exhaustion, but none of them actually heal. They don’t offer true joy, genuine connection, or holy rest; they just patch us up as if we are a machine so we can get back onto the assembly line.
We have completely commercialized, monetized, commodified the idea of rest.
We turn “self-care” into another item on our to-do list — something to buy, optimize, log, and check off as an accomplishment.
We take pride in how well we “rested,” treating peace like a badge of achievement.
But the moment rest becomes a product you brand and buy, or an achievement you check off a list, it is no longer Sabbath. It’s just productivity wearing sweats, a bathrobe. It treats rest as an expensive luxury item for those who can afford the fix, rather than a radical, un-commodifiable gift woven into the fabric of creation for every single body.
When we treat rest as a quick fix or an instrumental pit stop to refuel our engines for work, we are still serving an idol of production.
True Sabbath is not merely the absence of work; it is the presence of joy, uncalculated delight, and holy contentment. It is rejoicing for no other reason than that we are alive in a world made by a loving God.
Sabbath is connecting — deeply, uselessly, beautifully — to God, to one another, to creation, and to the vast, interwoven web of being that holds us all.
When disability theologian Nancy Eiesland wrote about the human body and the church, she pointed out something profound that a production- and efficiency-obsessed world so easily misses. Our economic systems measure human value by the metrics of speed, productivity, and output. And so people living with disabilities are continually marginalized by an “Egypt-minded” world.
Eiesland argued that those excluded from the “productive” world already embody what the rest of us have to be commanded to learn: that human value resides in being, not in performance. A human life does not derive its sacred dignity from its resume, its speed, or its economic output.
The rest of us scramble, burn out, and buy quick fixes trying to prove we are worth something, while those whom society deems “unproductive” stand as a prophetic witness, reminding us that belonging was never conditional on output in the first place.
Where do we find the remedy for this deep conditioning? We find it at the very beginning of the story.
In the Genesis creation narrative, humanity is created on day six. The very first day of human existence on this planet was not a work day. It was day seven. It was the Sabbath.
Before human beings ever planted a field, built a structure, wrote a sentence, or contributed a single brick to society, they opened their eyes and experienced God resting, delighting, and declaring creation to be “good” — not “finished,” but inherently good.
Humanity did not start with a task list; humanity started with a celebration. Rest precedes contribution. Belonging comes long before the resume.
I like to think that when Exodus 20 speaks of God showing steadfast love to the “thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments,” it is also speaking of that original Sabbath memory. That in our being, from creation through generation to generation, the blessing of Sabbath is woven into us. Love is carried forward not as a legalistic promise for good behavior, but as remembered rest.
When the text says “Remember the Sabbath” — using the Hebrew word zakhor — it is not asking us to adopt a brand-new habit or buy a new wellness tool. Zakhor means to recall who you have always been. It means recovering an original identity that was woven into your bones from creation, before Pharaoh ever handed you a tally sheet.
Some folks have asked me what I “did” on my sabbatical, maybe expecting an itinerary of impressive achievements or grand theological insights — a list of books read or deep personal reflections. But the moments that actually healed my soul, the moments that brought me back to my senses, were the most delightfully “useless.”
- It was taking an afternoon to slowly mend an old, torn bag with a needle and thread, instead of throwing it away.
- It was smearing paint onto a canvas without caring if it was good art, just loving the color.
- It was going to the Shedd Aquarium with seminary friends, standing in front of a tank, and taking photos of ridiculous, glowing fish just because they brought us pure joy.
- It was sitting in the pews at a friend’s ordination — not working, not planning a service, just witnessing grace.
- It was watching my little cousin eat ice cream with her fingers — sticky, messy, unselfconscious, and utterly full of delight.
None of those moments could be checked off a list or put on a resume. None of them made me a single dollar, optimized my health, or filled my inbox. But in those moments, I wasn’t an engine needing a tune-up. I was a human being standing in the seventh day. I was remembering the Sabbath.
That is why my sabbatical couldn’t just be a quick “fuel-up” or a break from productivity to fuel more productivity. It had to be a “return trip.” It was a journey back to the baseline of reality — back to the seventh day, where worth is a gift and time is a sanctuary.
When we create a culture — in our families, our workplaces, or right here in our church — that demands constant availability and instant responses from each other, we are asking people to be less than what God made them to be. We are inviting Egypt back into the sanctuary. We are treating each other like brick-makers instead of human beings created for seventh-day joy.
The core claim of the Sabbath is that rest is not earned. You will never finish the work. The inbox will never be completely empty. The tasks will never be fully checked off.
So what does it look like for us to practice this kind of seventh-day, this Sabbath joy, this week? It doesn’t mean buying an expensive wellness product or filling out a spiritual habit tracker. It doesn’t even have to be a full day. It means choosing small, unearned invitations to be present:
- It might look like picking up a needle and thread to mend an old shirt, or smearing paint on a canvas just because you love the colors — a “useless” craft or passion.
- It might look like sitting on a park bench watching birds, or taking photos of silly fish at an aquarium for no other reason than pure wonder.
- It might look like sending a text to a friend and explicitly saying, “No need to reply until Monday,” protecting their rest as much as your own.
- It might look like picking a twenty-four-hour window, or one afternoon, to leave the calendar blank, put the phone in a drawer, and let the clock be forgotten.
- It might look like witnessing grace in others by attending an event, a concert, or a service where you have zero responsibilities — where you aren’t volunteering, hosting, or managing — and simply sit in the pews or seats as a receiver of grace.
- Or it might look like slow hospitality: gathering with a friend or neighbor without preparing a grand meal or trying to host a perfect event. Sit together with a cup of coffee, or share an ice cream cone with a grandchild — messy, unhurried, and fully present with sticky fingers.
Sabbath is the radical claim that rest is in your nature. It is in your veins. It is woven into your very being-ness, in the image of a resting, delighting God who works, but who also stops, steps back, and takes time to rejoice in the web of life.
So if you are sitting here today feeling the phantom humming of a relentless week…
- If you are carrying the quiet guilt of feeling unproductive…
- If you are tired of trying quick fixes to survive a grind culture that was never meant to heal you…
Hear the ancient, holy word spoken to you today:
- You do not have to build a fortress to prove you are safe.
- You do not have to buy your way into peace.
- You do not have to earn the right to breathe, to rejoice, or to belong to this holy web of creation.
The Sabbath is not an accomplishment you have to achieve.
It is the blessing in your bones from the moment you were born.
You never left it.
You just forgot.