Day 3 – You Can Sleep In The Boat, Too

When YHWH rested, He wasn’t withdrawing from creation. He was setting a standard for our interaction with it. In building Shabbat into the structure of time itself, YHWH embedded a weekly reset into reality, a moment when chaos, which depends on perpetual distraction and motion, is denied its oxygen. To rest from the world is to render chaos powerless.

But Shabbat isn’t the only time we are to rest. The gift of rest runs all through our days, our weeks, and our lives. Think of it as any moment where we step out of the destructive pull of the world and step into the healing presence of the Father by tapping into His Shalom. We desperately need those moments. Whenever chaos competes for our attention, we need the counter-weight of YHWH’s Shalom to meet it.

Shabbat is where we learn how to do that. That weekly commitment of set apart, protected, and unhurried rest teaches us to release our grip on the world and rest in the Father. Shabbat is the model and once we know what that feels like, we can carry it with us into whatever we face the rest of the week.

• An intentional breath in the midst of conversation that is becoming heated.
• A moment of stillness before the day gets moving.
• A pause to remember where our true allegiance lies before the news cycle pulls us under.

These aren’t small things. They are products of learning how to rest.

Digging Deeper

Shabbat shows us how to step out of the world and into the gift of God’s restorative Shalom. Chaos, which belongs entirely to the temporal, can’t follow us there. Shabbat puts us into the presence of YHWH and out of the reach of the world. Agents of chaos can’t rest, and chaos cannot survive a rested soul.

Psalm 127:2 says, “He gives sleep to his beloved.” The Hebrew word translated ‘beloved’ here means the dearly loved one, the intimate companion of YHWH. Rest isn’t something we have to earn. It is given as a gift to us.

This is Shalom in action and it isn’t something we only get if we meet certain conditions. It is a gift from the Father to one who trusts in His care, pauses from striving, and opens the gift.

Psalm 46:10 opens with “Be still, and know that I am God.” The Hebrew for “be still” means to forsake, to leave alone, to release, or to let fall. This is the opposite of gripping or holding onto something. Chaos requires our grip. It needs us holding onto anxiety, to information, to the expectation that more things to dread are forthcoming. The moment you let go, chaos has nothing to work with. It is the act of opening the hand and watching the chaos fall out. When we release our grip on it, it loses its grip on us.

Notice where the chaos lives in this passage and where the refuge lives. The outside world is in chaos. The inner world is held by YHWH. YHWH is our shelter, our refuge, our strength. Shabbat is not merely a weekly appointment, it’s the practice of examining our connections to the world, disconnecting from them, and returning all of that strength and attention to YHWH. It is the practice of cleansing the chaos from our lives and rooting ourselves, once more, in Shalom.

While Shabbat is a weekly reset, we enter into the gift of the Father’s rest each night of sleep as well. In fact, chaos is so weak that it is defeated simply by the act of us taking a break from it. Ever notice how an overwhelming problem feels better in the morning? Shalom gives us restorative rest and in our rest, the chains of chaos are broken. His mercies are new each morning, and they always will be.

Day 3  Takeaway

Shabbat isn’t a pause from the battle. It’s a means of fighting the battle. Resting amid chaos is one of the most aggressive acts of faith available to you, because chaos can’t survive a soul that stops feeding it. Every time you rest in the Father, you are defeating something that can’t rest at all.