When you think of the word Sabbath, what comes to your mind? When I ask this question to fellow Christians here in the United States, I usually hear two responses: “rest” or “Sunday.” And as with a lot of things, a closer look shows us that Sabbath is both much more than and better than “rest” or “Sunday.” This was our focus at Feast 2025, and it generated such goodness in me and gave great comfort to me as I studied and taught on Jesus and Sabbath.
We often think of sacred space (temple, sanctuaries, altars, etc.) but we don’t often think about sacred time. Sabbath is not a sacred space with a specific physical location in the earth. Sabbath is sacred time. We don’t DO Sabbath. We ENTER into it. We let it do its work in us. As Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “The Sabbath comes like a caress, wiping away fear, sorrow and somber memories.”1
For me, 2025 was a year freighted with loss. Losing my mother and my 16-year old dog, Chester, hit me hard like a one-two punch. It rocked me. It leveled me. The grief has slowed me down. I have not had the energy I usually have as lament has been so prominent in my heart. Sabbath met me in such a personal way—this rhythmic reminder in the calendar that I am more than my work. I can cease my work and spend sacred time remembering God’s work; He is making all things new.
Jesus did some of His best work on the Sabbath. When you’re reading the gospels, and Jesus is present on a Sabbath, you pretty much already know the story—somebody is about to get healed or restored. Jesus celebrates Sabbath by bringing restoration. Jesus celebrates Sabbath by putting things right. This “celebration of restoration” lies at the very heart of Sabbath throughout the Scriptures.
Sabbath is a foretaste of heaven. The world to come will be a forever Sabbath where all striving and straining will have ceased forever. The living God will have put all things right, and we will celebrate this restoration with Him forever. Heschel also wrote something that I think of often when I think of Sabbath being a forever Sabbath. He said, “Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath … one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come.”
A Prayer for Sabbath
Lord, in this world of striving and straining, this world consumed with being more, having more, I pray that you would sow Your Sabbath deeper and deeper into our hearts and our very lives. Help us learn Your heart for us, Your desire that we would find ancient and present rest and restoration in You.
Would You mature in us an appetite that desires to meet with You in sacred time? Would You cultivate in us an appetite that relishes the taste of Sabbath? The seventh day is a gift given to us. Would You continue to teach us how to receive Your gift of Sabbath? You are even now making all things new!
As we cease our work, would the sacred time of Sabbath fill us with hope, comfort, wonder and awe as we remember YOUR work. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies. You have never failed a people yet. We will not be the first. Thank You for the Sabbath, this foretaste of heaven that we get to rhythmically experience here on earth.
In Jesus’s name, Amen.
For more teaching on Sabbath from Kristi McLelland, join us at the Feast Virtual Event—an event where we gather to feast upon God’s Word and rediscover the beauty of Sabbath as God intended. Come and take your seat at the table from anywhere on the globe.
Works Cited
1. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), viii.
2. Ibid., xv.
