Sabbath – an underrated, major key to success

It’s Saturday, my favourite day of the week, the Sabbath, aka the day of rest.

I am not here  to start a theological discussion about why Sabbath is Saturday and not Sunday, or why it should be important to everyone, not just Jews or Seventh Day Adventists. Happy to have the convo with you another time, but my point today is talking about and encouraging some reflections on and during resting.

When was the last time you felt you properly rested?

Where were you?

Who were you with?

Who and what were you without?

What were you doing?

Hold on to those answers as your personal road map to rest.

 

For me, rest is an opportunity to relax, reconnect with the people I love and reflect on the still waters in my life.
By reflecting on the still waters in my life, I mean intentionally focusing on the moments in my life that might not have been obvious or in the forefront of my mind but have a major impact. These could be profound revelations or sub-sentences in conversation that happened but in the hustle and bustle I didn’t get to recognise, digest or respond to them properly at the time of their occurrence.

It’s like rewinding back through the week to a particular moment that is highlighted to me and then analysing the moment bit by bit to firstly understand the context and identify any issues or opportunities for learning. And secondly, either devise solutions to issues or implement the learning.
It’s like a coach going through the recording of a sports game and showing the team how to improve performance based on their last performance.This is the literal application of the word reflection – turning your thought back on something.

It’s so important to have those moments regularly so we learn to be more aware of ourselves and others and how to steward ourselves and our relationship with others better.
The world would be a much better place if we regularly spent time reflecting on our strengths, weaknesses and offences to build on our strengths, to mitigate for our weaknesses and to apologise for our offences.
To many that might not seem like a relaxing exercise and it can be time consuming, but for great results it’s not possible to multitask during it.

It is in our time of rest we can truly reflect – relax and discern; be still and know.
And this is what then enables us to reconnect with God, ourselves, our purpose, our values and others much better.
Activities like journalling and reading devotionals help us structure our times of rest and reflection and can be done on a daily basis. But I still encourage you where possible to take a day each week to rest and reflect, because the more time you take, the less interrupted you are, the deeper you can reflect and the more you might learn.

So, next time you think you might be too busy to have a Sabbath – think about what you might be missing and not seeing due to your busyness. Is it worth ending up burnt out, missing out, or fallen out with God and others because you missed the opportunity to reflect in the still and very deep running waters of your life?