Sabbath

This corresponds with the parallel observation throughout (especially) Genesis-Exodus that human efforts are not especially good at establishing and maintaining order or understanding the covenant as God working to establish and maintain order on humanity’s behalf. This idea represents one of the most significant divergences of Israelite thinking from its broader context (where humans are usually delegated to sustain their own order on behalf of the gods) so it is not surprising that the festival encapsulating this idea has no direct parallel [Sabbath].—Walton and Walton, The Lost World of the Torah, 252

On sabbath and sabbaticals

There's a post on Christian Scholar's Network about Sabbath and sabbaticals. Or maybe better: How academics don't take a sabbatical during their sabbaticals.

You should read the whole thing, but here's a smattering. After realizing that they were even more fraught during the "sabbatical" than before, here's her reaction:

At this point, I did what academics do best when lost. I read books on sabbaticals, leisure, and the sabbath.

Can I get a witness? : )

And this is excellent, as well:

If, as humans, we are indeed image-bearers of God, then it follows that we should emulate his example of resting. As someone who considers herself a creator through her words, the Holy Spirit could not flow through what I write if I did not embrace rest as he did. During sabbatical, I learned that academia, and its norms of overwork, had become an idol for me. Soon, I observed a disturbing trend in my mentors and my contemporaries on social media, too, including those who profess to dedicate their studies to the concept of rest. Many would lament, paradoxically, that “studying and advocating for rest is hard work.” Others freely admitted to advising others to rest while struggling to make time for it themselves, maintaining that badge of honor of working too hard even as they claimed to resist the glamour overwork provides. Work, in the academic world, produces accolades. Rest, on the other hand, produces guilt and shame. It challenges the ideals of production our institutions, and our capitalist economy, celebrate. We might tell others rest is needed, but we would rarely admit to enjoying its dividends for ourselves.

Amen and amen!

Most of my Christian life, I've been pretty adamant about taking a day off from regular work. Even in grad school, I would close the books for a day. Yes, even in the midst of my PhD comprehensive exams, which ran Thursday, Friday, Monday, I closed the books Saturday night and didn't open them until Monday AM. (I passed.)

But, once I became self-employed and working from home, that practice collapsed for almost ten years. I've recently reclaimed it and take one day to do nothing related to editing. I'll read some extra Greek and Hebrew and a book. A side benefit is that my to-read pile isn't growing as fast! But, I also come back to work on Monday refreshed and less stressed.

I highly recommend trying it!

The end of the matter

We cannot solve the problem of time through the conquest of space, through either pyramids or fame. We can only solve the problem of time through sanctification of time. To men alone time is elusive; to men with God time is eternity in disguise.

Creation is the language of God, Time is His song, and things of space the consonants in the song. To sanctify time is to sing the vowels in unison with Him.

This is the task of men: to conquer space and sanctify time.—The Sabbath, p. 101

<idle musing>
Well, that's all for this book; it's just a short little thing. But as with all things by Heschel, well worth your time. I hope this encourages you to find a copy and read it!
</idle musing>

God of time

Pagans project their consciousness of God into a visible image or associate Him with a phenomenon in nature, with a thing of space. In the Ten Commandments, the Creator of the universe identifies Himself by an event in history, by an event in time, the liberation of the people from Egypt, and proclaims: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth, or that is in the water under the earth.”—The Sabbath, p. 95

How free are you, really?

Nothing is as hard to suppress as the will to be a slave to one’s own pettiness. Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man must fight for inner liberty. Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things. This is our constant problem—how to live with people and remain free, how to live with things and remain independent.—The Sabbath, p. 89

<idle musing>
To paraphrase C.S. Lewis:
I talk of freedom,
A scholar's parrot may talk Greek
But self-imprisoned
Always end where I begin

It anything shows that our culture is actually not free, it is our enslavement to our passions, especially among those we consider leaders and role models.
</idle musing>

Holy place?

In the Bible, no thing, no place on earth, is holy by itself. Even the site on which the only sanctuary was to be built in the Promised Land is never called holy in the Pentateuch, nor was it determined or specified in the time of Moses. More than twenty times it is referred to as “the place which the Lord your God shall choose.—The Sabbath, p. 80 (emphasis original)