I am reading the book, The Rest of God by Mark Buchanon, which aims at restoring our soul by restoring our Sabbath.  One of the things I appreciate is his approach to the Sabbath which is not just a day but an orientation/attitude.  Here is a sampling of that:

“God made us from dust.  We’re never too far from our origins.  The apostle Paul says we’re only clay pots — dust mixed with water, passed through fire.  Hard, yes, but brittle too.  Knowing this, God gave us the gift of Sabbath — not just a day, but as an orientation, a way of seeing and knowing.  Sabbath-keeping is a form of mending.  It’s mortar in the joints.  Keep Sabbath, or else break too easily, and oversoon.  Keep it, otherwise our dustiness consumes us, becomes us, and we end up able to hold exactly nothing.

In a culture where busyness is a fetish and stillness is laziness, rest is sloth.  But without rest, we miss the rest of God: the rest he invites us to enter more fully so that we might know him more deeply. “Be still, and know that I am God.” Some knowing is never pursued, only received.  And for that, you need to be still.“

Sabbath is both a day and an attitude to nurture such stillness.  It is both time on a calendar and a disposition of the heart.  It is a day we enter, but just as much a way we see.  Sabbath imparts the rest of God—actual physical, mental, spiritual rest, but also the rest of God—the things of God’s nature and presence we miss in our busyness. 

Lord, give us all (but especially me) grace to see this, to believe this, to live this.