Of sabbath and sabbatical...

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time. it'll be no secret to you that I place a very high value on the biblical principle of sabbath rest. Not in the stereotypical way of saying it's wrong to cook or do the gardening on a Sunday.... but grappling more deeply with what God really wanted for us when He emphasised the importance of Sabbath in the Bible.

Doing a search of this blog will turn up more than a dozen posts relating to sabbath. Here are just a few of them, spanning the years from 2013 to 2017:

It's all about saving lives.

Getting on my soapbox.

Manna ... and the value of rest.

Total dependence.

So, if sabbath is such a high value to me, you might be surprised to discover that I've never taken a single "sabbatical" during more than forty years of being a missionary. That might seem incongruous to you, but in fact it's precisely because of my commitment to sabbath that I've never felt the need to take a longer time off work in order to rest and recover.

Let me explain... I believe that sabbath means more than just one day off every week, or a whole sabbatical year every seven or ten years. Although we first encounter sabbath in the Old Testament paradigm of not working, cooking, walking, etc, on the seventh day of the week, I believe that God's intention for the sabbath principle was to teach us not to strive: not to act as if everything depends on us, but to acknowledge our total dependence on Him and our need to take times of rest that allow us to focus on our relationship with Him and with others.

We rightly focus on a "day of rest" each week, but I believe it's also important to think in terms of times of rest each day, each month, each year.

So, even in a busy season, I take care not to work non stop all day. I don't skip church because "there's work to be done." I try to plan in a free day each month when I can go for a trip or a hike with the dogs, or take a personal retreat with the Lord. When I worked in Africa, I planned a whole month every year when I would go home to visit my family and my home church in Scotland. I tried to build the sabbath principle into all of my life and the lives of those I led. (If we'd just spent three intensive weeks on a summer outreach, we'd close down our youth ministry centre for a few days so that our staff could rest, do their laundry, write their newsletter, meet up with friends and spend quality time with God.)

And so, here I am, having served several decades as a missionary, but never having taken an extended time off for a sabbatical.

What do we mean by "sabbatical," anyway? Well, typically it's a longer than usual break from work in order to refocus and be refreshed. Sometimes people take a sabbatical in order to study or get some further training to equip them for their ministry calling. Sometimes they take time out because they feel called to write a book. Sometimes people take a sabbatical for family reasons or health reasons. Sometimes it's because they want to travel and broaden their perspective on life and ministry. And sometimes, especially during transitions, people take a sabbatical time in order to debrief, to rest and reflect on their future steps.

So, why am I writing about this today? Am I about to tell you that I feel it's finally time for me to take a sabbatical?

No, that's not the reason for this post. I feel, in this older stage of my life, that I have a healthy pace of life, with a good balance of work and ministry commitments alongside dedicated times for rest, recreation and retreat times with God...

... but this horrible home-hunting season is beginning to make me feel that I'm subject to a kind of "forced sabbatical" when it comes to my travel plans. I've already missed two leadership gatherings, one European and one International, that I would normally have attended. I had to turn down an invitation to teach in the PCYM school in Eastern Europe and now there's a question mark above my plans to teach in the PCYM school in Western Europe. It's as if all my ministry travel needs to be put on hold because my home situation just isn't stable enough to allow me to leave the country.

In recent days, I've even been wondering if I need to make it official. Not a full-on sabbatical in the usual sense of the word, because I have all sorts of online ministry commitments, training courses and coaching sessions throughout this year. But I've been asking myself whether I need to accept that I'm on a sort of "travel sabbatical" until my housing situation is resolved. It's kind of demoralising to spend time preparing to teach in a training course and then discover that being homeless makes it impossible for you to travel.

I don't really understand why something as ordinary as finding a place to live is encroaching so much on the seemingly more spiritual and important tasks of teaching and leading... but I do recognise that the personal one needs to be resolved in order for me to give my total attention to all kinds of ministry invitations again.

So it's simply a question that I'm asking myself this week...