Calm in the Commotion

By Allison van Tilborgh

"Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy" (Exodus 20:8).

Over a year ago, I spent the Sabbath with a friend in the Five Towns on Long Island, New York. My friend is an Orthodox Jew who joined a joint housing community for young women who are waiting to find their perfect match through the complicated web that is the Orthodox matchmaking process. In other words, she was the real deal.

What began as a novel concept (practicing a radical Sabbath) unexpectedly became a weekly part of life for my husband and me. The practice has taught me about myself and God’s vision of rest, which has far-reaching implications for any Christian trying to navigate the non-stop world of 21st-century America, but especially pastors and leaders.

As most Christians, I was familiar with the Sabbath interwoven through the texts of the Old Testament. I understood it had something to do with not working, but I had no idea that the modern Orthodox also interpreted it to include not using your car, watching TV, cooking, turning on and off light switches and perhaps most peculiar of all, ripping toilet paper.

For the Sabbath, all sustenance and chores need to be finalized prior to sundown on Friday night and will remain on pause until after the sun has set on Saturday. On the Sabbath, you are not supposed to do mundane things, like talk about finances or house renovations. Instead, you are to focus on catching up on sleep, visiting family, spending quality time with your spouse and taking the occasional walk around the block.

It may be difficult to wrap one’s head around the fact that an estimated two million people follow these prescriptions every single week, without exception. Part of the process sounds glamorous, even self-indulgent; other aspects of it seem self-emaciating and entirely undesirable. It may be impossible to imagine that any high-performing leader in America could ever lean into such extreme practices. Why would they?

Isn’t the Sabbath meant to serve man, not man serve the Sabbath? (see Mark 2:27) Didn’t Jesus usher in a permanent Sabbath rest for His people? (see Hebrews 4) What if I want to spend my spare time scrolling through Instagram or taking my car to the beach? As a full-time organizational leader and follower of Christ who is also a full-time graduate student and business owner, these are questions I asked myself too . . . that is until I experienced the liberating power of the Sabbath in my own life.

At first, an inexplicable anxiety overcame me. I was terrified of everything that could happen while I was away from my phone. When would I wake up the next morning if I didn’t have an alarm clock? What if my husband needed my help from our home in Florida? What if something happened to a family relative, like a stroke or heart attack? My mind went to the worst-case scenarios. I realized I hadn’t been without my phone for this long in, well, since I got it.

And yet, none of these things happened. Although the world turned just as fast as it did before, it felt much slower. I slept in until 10 a.m., read some of a book, met up with some of my friend’s neighbors and enjoyed a stroll in the charming neighborhood. Released from the pressures of constant media stimulation, I was able to engage in meaningful conversations about life, marriage, fears and hopes. I met new acquaintances and was able to hear God more clearly than I had in a long, long time.

Somehow, 25 hours (the Orthodox Sabbath) began to feel like 40 or 50. At first it was boring. Then, it was relieving. I began to understand that, although we are all only awarded 24 hours in a day, not all hours are equal. Maybe, I pondered, Jesus wasn’t telling us to abandon the Sabbath entirely but rather to redefine it to serve humanity better. Maybe, if God Himself practiced this cessation from creation for an entire day, I could, too. All things must lie dormant before they can be resurrected.

As a church media consultant, I frequently meet pastors on the verge of complete burnout. Their marriages are struggling, their kids feel disconnected from their parents and the church mortgage weighs on their shoulders. They are expected to be perfect preachers, financiers, managers, confidants, influencers and family men, all at the same time. The tension is unrelenting, but they are not able to be open and honest about their pain because their church congregations depend on them as a leader. If their pastors can’t make it, how can they?

The pressure also extends to their children, who are constantly inundated with a steady stream of media that increasingly divides our nation, deteriorates their mental health and funnels them into a growing sense of isolation. Ask any teen if scrolling through TikTok is relaxing, and you’ll find many are stuck in toxic cycles of technology addiction paired with feelings of self-inadequacy. Maybe laying alone in bed and scrolling for several hours at a time is not really rest.

How do we escape this pattern? Perhaps in a more ideal world, we wouldn’t need such drastic rituals as the Orthodox Sabbath to set aside time for true rest. In my career, I have tried all the modern productivity tricks: app limits, trying to put away my phone during meal times and even assigning “no plans days” into my Google Calendar to avoid over-committing myself. These were all helpful, but, unfortunately, did not produce true rest—complete cessation. There were always tabs open in the proverbial browser of my brain.

For about a year now, I have engaged in regular days of complete Sabbath. It began with once a month, then twice a month and then eventually became a weekly occurrence. It was actually my husband’s idea. Generally speaking, I was the one to come up with all the reasons we couldn’t commit to this practice, but it was my husband’s faith that made this practice possible. Everyone in my family knows they can’t expect to reach me from Friday night to Saturday night, and guess what? The world continues to turn.

Is my Sabbath “halachically” perfect? Far from it. Sometimes we start late or end early. I’ve taken to using a pen to underline sections of readings I like, even though you are not supposed to write on the Sabbath. If the candles haven’t burned out by the time we want to sleep, sometimes by husband will extinguish the flames.

And yet, what we are able to accomplish is incredibly spiritually fulfilling.

You may have heard the phrase, “Attention is the purest form of love.” Through many an al fresco breakfast on our porch, I’ve begun to notice the different species of birds that come and go through different times of the year. I have gotten to see butterflies leave their chrysalises for the first time, drying off their wings as they venture into the unknown. I finally notice the potent scent of magnolia flowers, recently in bloom, wafting through the air. In other words, I’ve begun to pay attention to what had always been there.

For this brief window of time, the world is perfectly good as it is—as God saw it (Genesis 1:31).

I am increasingly convinced that society’s radical woes warrant a radical response. War, famine, inequality and despair are rampant. Increasingly, the default response to today’s world is withdrawal or hatred. Too many of us rush through our lives, sometimes even unaware when we haven’t stepped outside for days at a time. We are tired but can’t identify why. Life itself has become exhausting.

In such circumstances, rhythms that seem outdated, arbitrary and repetitive have become moments for God to manifest Himself in my life, away from the distractions that keep me from being attentive to what really matters. The Sabbath has given me a zest for life again.

Perhaps you cannot cease from labor on Fridays through Saturdays. But is there another window during the week you can entirely commit to rest? Perhaps you prefer to continue to turn on and off light switches. But can you abstain from binging a TV show? Perhaps you need to use your phone to check your glucose levels or receive updates from a relative in critical care. But can you put your phone in the other room when it’s not needed?

Is there really not a world where, for 25 hours, you can say no to the expectation to be productive?

If you have never kept a full Sabbath before, I encourage you to give it a try—just once. You will probably be surprised at what you find about yourself and your world—and you may hear God’s voice in the process.