On a national holiday known as Labor Day, we take a rest.
The spiritual life, in sickness and in health, in the shallows and in the deeps, proves to be some sort of cooperation with the plans and purposes of God. There really is a guilt-free possibility of pausing today to keep the Sabbath, a gift of time that seems clearly to be part of God's plan for God's people.
The word "Sabbath" comes from the Hebrew verb Shabbat, which means "to cease or desist." It is the only commandment God knew we would forget. "Remember the Sabbath," God implores us, "and keep it holy." Remember to stop. Remember to rest. Remember to remember that, yes, we join God in co-creating a redeemed world, but one day a week, one holiday a year, we don't have to pack in anything else.
Can we join fully in God's plans and purposes while ignoring the ebb and flow of work and rest? Even God rests. Abraham Heschel, in The Sabbath, wrote, "Creation, we are taught, is not an act that happened once upon a time, once and forever. The act of bringing the world into existence is a continuous process. God called the world into being, and that call goes on. There is this present moment because God is present. Every instant is an act of creation. A moment is not a terminal but a flash, a signal of Beginning."
The Sabbath, or a national holiday, can teach us that even God chooses to incorporate rest into the rhythm of the created order.
Solomon said, "Better is one hand full of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind." (Ecclesiastes 4:6, Revised Standard Version)
This quietness, this silence, is the fruit of an astounding wisdom that knows there is a time to stop.
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