Devotions for a Busy Business Person, no. 280 – Sabbath

I am sitting on a farm in Tajikistan, cross-legged on a korpacha (mat) on the floor. The owners who I came to serve are having their mid-afternoon rest, a wise habit in a hot country, especially on the sabbath day. They have insisted I rest, too. I protest, weakly, that I am on a work trip. But if the people I came to serve are resting, I must, too. Even the minah birds and magpies are quiet. Only the rooster keeps crowing.

This morning we had talked about how the land needed a Sabbath, a rest. Indeed, God commanded it. 

“For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.” Leviticus 25:3,4

And when the people did not follow the commandment, God enforced the rest regardless. 

“Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; the then land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it.” Leviticus 26:34-35

This a land of no sabbaths. Hundreds of years of oppression and 75 years of Soviet agriculture gave this land no rest. The farm I am on now is trying to change that, using regenerative agriculture and sequential grazing to give time for the land to heal. 

And the wind left, and I wept,
And I said to myself,
What have you done, with the
Garden that was entrusted to you?

Antonio Machado as quoted by Robert Bly in Martin Shaw

As I sit in the shade here, I wonder, do I give a Sabbath for the garden that of my soul? Do you? Most of you are hard workers; do you give yourself permission to rest? I don’t, and God’s warning are clear. If I don’t rest, he’ll enforce it through some form of physical or mental diminishment until I do.  

After all, God rested. I guess we should take our queue from Him.

Prayer

God of action, God of peace, God of the Sabbath, help me rest.