Coming Forth with Lazarus

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Understanding the Sabbath in light of God's sovereignty

Mark Buchanan | posted 2/06/2008

Topics:	Rest, Sabbath, Spiritual disciplines, Spiritual formation, Spiritual growth
Filters:	Group Leader, New leader, Teacher, Train
Purpose:	Discipleship
References:	Psalm 23:5 , John 11:38-44 , John 12:1-2
Date Added:	February 06, 2008

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But if God be God, then there's time enough. If God be God, then in repentance and rest is our salvation, in quietness and trust is our strength (Isaiah 30:15). Philip Malancthon once said to his friend Martin Luther, "Today, Martin, you and I will discuss God's governance of the universe," to which Luther replied, "No, Philip. Today you and I are going fishing, and we'll leave the governance of the universe to God."

Here are a few practical things that might help you to know the rest of God.

Reorient. Sometimes we need to change our attitude, not our activities. Resentment feeds weariness, and so begrudging the time you spend doing something is sure to make the doing of it long and dreary. For me, thinking of the church as Christ's bride, not an organization, changed my attitude: I want to serve her. Fairy tales have told us that radiant beauties sometimes wear the disguise of ugly crones. The Bible tells us that the bride of Christ sometimes does the same—and, indeed, that Christ himself sometimes wears the disguise of "the least of these." Believing this—that serving ordinary people is a way of serving Jesus and his bride—renews my motivation.
Refocus. Often in the midst of overwhelming busyness, I stop—not for hours, but long enough to catch my breath, regain perspective, and fill my lungs with fresh air. Sometimes I write a poem—an astonishingly effective way to rediscover, with wonder and thankfulness, what I've grown deaf and blind to in my mad rush. Or I go for walk and pay keen attention to sounds, colors, and stillness. Such pauses are mini-Sabbaths that replenish me and send me back to my tasks with fresh energy and creativity.
Reconnect. Busyness, unrelieved, kills togetherness. A vicious irony of ministry is that those of us who build and serve community often have no time for it ourselves. Jesus and his disciples were often going full-tilt at ministry. But in the midst of that, he knew when to pause just so these friends could spend time with one another. So I do that.

Restoring the Soul

Maybe King David pulls all this together for us. Ever wonder when David wrote Psalm 23? What was the occasion? I have a theory—the day his son Absalom overthrew the kingdom. It's a wild guess, to be sure. But there are two clues, one in the Psalm, one in the account of Absalom's overthrow and David's evacuation, that David turned that evacuation into Sabbath.

The clue in Psalm 23 is verse 5: "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows."

In the presence of enemies, with an insurrectionist son sitting on his throne and a bitter old rival throwing curses and dirt on his head (2 Samuel 16:5ff), could David have reflected back to those early days of shepherding and remembered that, even here—especially here, in the valley of the shadow of death—God watches and protects, and puts goodness on his tail, and leads him finally to something far better than an earthly palace: the very house of God?

The clue in the account of the overthrow is 2 Samuel 16:14: "The king and all the people with him arrived at their destination exhausted. And there he refreshed himself."

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May 04, 2009 1:38 PM

Mark Wallace

Thanks for this. I heard you speak on this topic about a year ago and I have been quoting you lately. It was good to see the whole thought again. I am sending this link to everyone I quoted you to.