A Litany in Praise of Sabbaths

By the Rev Neil Thorogood

Voice 1
Got to keep on going. Got to keep the pressure high. Got to ensure you drive yourself as hard as you can so that productivity stays high.

Voice 2
But you, Lord, rest. You take time to step away from the busy crowd and the endless demands of so many needy people. You take time to call your disciples to join you in restful prayer in silent places out of the public gaze. You make another parable out of time.

Voice 1
Time is priceless and there’s never enough of it to go around. Don’t imagine you can devote much of it to yourself. That’s really just selfishness when there are so many people who demand your attention, so many emails lining up to be answered, so many tasks that no one else can do.

Voice 2
Yet you, Creator of Time, delight in stopping after the glorious days of creativity to rest. You look around at all that you have made. You relish the new worlds spinning and the stars igniting and the life forming, and you stop to enjoy it. You see its goodness and teach us that stopping is good too.

Voice 1
Missionary churches are busy churches filled with activity and driven by powerful visions. Effective ministers don’t drag their feet but get going; fast. Congregations aren’t meant to sit back and watch it all going on but get stuck in, making a difference by offering all the time and talent that they possibly can.

Voice 2
But you, Healer and Friend, surprise believers by sending them to strange places at slow paces so that they can notice all that’s going on around them. You unfold the truth of God slowly, amidst friendships crafted with care and in conversations that can take many attempts to get right. Often, it seems, your patience far surpasses our own.

So help us, God of weekdays and Sabbaths, to go slowly and to love ourselves too.

Help us to carve out time for you even in the busiest days and the most frantic weeks.

Help us to turn again and again in prayer to you as source and goal of all our living.

Help us to liberate ourselves from diaries that can cage our souls so that we might stand fully in the gentle goodness of your Spirit’s embrace.

Help us to be people who honour your Sabbath in ways that make life rich and good rather than grim and stifled.

Then may we, like those disciples with Jesus, like you at the dawn of all things, take time to simply rest and be and know that you are good.

And in this knowing, may we reach out in love and care to others,

stilling the voices that pressurise and control

and whisper freedom instead.

Amen.

This reflection and prayer has been written by the Rev Neil Thorogood, Director of Pastoral Studies at Westminster College, Cambridge. Neil teaches pastoral theology on all the academic programmes and also has particular interests in the visual arts and theology.

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