Week One

How does this resonate with you and your experience? In what ways does it stretch and invite you?

*Tricia Hersey, Rest is Resistance, Little, Brown Spark, 2022, digital ed. p 40.

03 Breathe Love

Slowly breathe in and out for three (or more) minutes. (You can set a timer with a soothing alarm sound so you don’t have to worry about time.)

As you breathe in, breathe in God’s love and life.

As you breathe out, say or think, “I am beloved.”

04

Delight

What surprises or interests you about this quote? Recall moments when you’ve experienced delight. Might you understand those moments as Sabbath?

What delights God? Sit with these questions today, and do something that brings you delight.

*Norman Wirzba, Living the Sabbath, Brazos Press, 2006, p.52.

05 Worship and Sabbath

Come to worship this week ready to have our lives reoriented. Come ready to give thanks and praise to God. Come ready to respond to God’s grace. Come ready to see ourselves as we truly are: God’s beloved in need of God’s grace, care, forgiveness, and renewal. Come ready to have our hearts and minds cultivated so that we might more fully experience God’s presence with us and let God’s grace orient our lives around it. In doing so, may our worship be restorative. May it be sabbath.

06 Why I Work

Work (whatever ways you labor, paid or unpaid) is one of the primary ways we know our purpose in the world. At its best, it’s a place where we develop and grow, and it’s a way that we live into our discipleship calling to care for, feed, heal, teach, restore, and build up. Of course not every bit of our work so clearly embodies these ideas, so take a moment today to remind yourself why you labor. What is life-giving about it? What is purposeful? Give thanks to God as you consider.

Sabbath Spaces

What kind of space delights you and brings you to life? Where are the spaces in which you are able to rest, be restored, find tranquility, and joy? Designate for yourself one or more Sabbath Spaces. Perhaps it’s a place you already frequent. Or a new place you seek out. Or maybe it’s a place in your home that you set aside and create for sabbath moments.

08 Take a Rest, You Are Already Enough

Too often when we consider our own rest, it comes at the end of a never-ending to-do list. We think we must do more, achieve more, be more, to earn rest. We forget that God already calls us beloved and enough.

What would it be like to live into our belovedness today? What would it be like to see our rest and wellbeing as part of our purpose?

Today, practice taking care of yourself before you begin your other daily tasks. Begin with your belovedness. Rest not because you have achieved, but because God calls you enough.