Walking home from school, I found Grandma, Grandpa, and Mom standing in the kitchen. I was ten. Their faces shone with a distinct luminescence that I had not witnessed before. Being an only child, I of course presumed they were simply thrilled to see me. My pride was soon to be popped. They showed me a little piece of paper gently lying atop the newspapers on the dining–room table.

That little paper changed everything.

The story is well known in the family: my grandparents had driven up from California the evening before. Stopping at a gas station along the Oregon border, they purchased some snacks, gas, and, as they often did, a lottery ticket. Thinking little of it, they stuffed the ticket in a pocket and continued journeying north. At their hotel that night, Grandpa stayed up to watch the news where they were soon to announce the lottery numbers. As the balls were picked from a whirling globe, the first number matched. And then second number. Then the third number. At this point, he shook Grandma awake. She wiped her eyes as they watched the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh numbers match. All seven numbers. Their jaws dropped. Their minds struggled to come to terms with what sat emblazoned across the TV screen. Unimaginable. Unthinkable. How much did they win? What does this mean? The host announced the winning amount. That night, Grandma and Grandpa became multi–millionaires.

After a sleepless night, they drove to our home and placed the lottery ticket on our dining–room table. The $4.6 million helped our family in profound ways. It paid debts. Financed vacations. Funded tuitions. But the story also has a dark side. A profound gift that created momentary bliss eventually led to bickering, infighting, and anger in the family. After nearly fifty years of marriage, Grandma and Grandpa’s marriage ended. Family members stopped talking. And a cold bitterness took over. I don’t retell this story to shame a single soul. By the grace of God, healing and reconciliation has begun in our family. Yet the fact remains: no one knew how to steward such a gift.

More critical than a gift is how we handle the gift. We receive something incredible, even unimaginable, yet have no way of knowing what to do with it. Rather than enjoying the gift, we fight over it. Jesus warns of this problem in the parable of the workers and the vineyard (Matt. 20:1–16). As the story goes, a group of unemployed men are hired for much–needed work during harvest season. After their day of work, the manager compensates them with the promised wage. But rather than celebrate both a good day’s work and money in the pocket, the employees gripe that workers who labored far shorter received similar generosity. This parable demonstrates what so many followers of Jesus do with the grace of God. Rather than enjoy the profound gift, we demand an explanation for God’s generosity toward others who we believe deserve it far less.

The Sabbath is a gift we do not know how to receive.

In a world of doing, going, and producing, we have little use for a gift that invites us to stop. But that is the original gift: a gift of rest. Of course, at the world’s beginning, God finishes the very first week by extending to the whole creation a gift: a day to stop, breathe, cease, enjoy, feast. God named it “Sabbath.”

That Sabbath day—time honored and approved—has sustained and nourished human communities and all of creation since the origins of the world. Still, like many of God’s gifts, we have struggled to receive it. In church life, we bicker over its validity. We argue over what day Sabbath has to be. We get trapped in Sabbath rules and nuanced doctrinal rationale for why we no longer need to seriously consider it. We start whole denominations over Sabbath disagreements. We think that we are the only ones who really know how to enjoy it. We fall into the same trap time and again—not knowing how to enjoy a gift from God. Many of these questions may be driven by a legitimate concern to be faithful to God and Scripture, yet they have created divisions and unrest.

When all is said and done, the worst thing that has happened to the Sabbath is religion. Religion is hostile to gifts. Religion hates free stuff. Religion squanders the good gifts of God by trying to earn them, which is why we will never really enjoy a sacred day of rest as long as we think our religion is all about earning.

This is nothing new: hostility toward the Sabbath has flowed in the church’s and the world’s blood for a long time. Many early church fathers, such as Justin Martyr, saw the Sabbath day as punishment for the Jews, who he believed needed a day of obedience to be reminded of their depravity. But is Sabbath a punishment? Others have rejected it lock, stock, and barrel, relegating it to the status of relic—antiquated, arcane, unworthy of contemporary consideration, an idea from our “dusty pawnshop of doctrinal beliefs.” Others dismiss it as an idealistic, if not impossible, practice. “Who has time to Sabbath, anyway?” they ask. “I’ll sleep when I die. I mean, if the devil never rests, why should I?”

But these hollow notions are based on human reason rather than Scripture. A Sabbath proves an awkward fit in our fast–paced, work–drunk, production–obsessed world. Yet whatever skepticism we harbor toward Sabbath, such disdain is not shared by the Bible, Jesus, or much of church history. God’s story has fundamentally been a story about a simple gift of a day of rest.

In a world of doing, going, and producing, we have little use for a gift that invites us to stop.

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Marva Dawn has written, “The spiritual resources given to us through faith in the .”Triune God are the best treasures available
The Sabbath is one such treasure. Our problem? We do not know what to do with Sabbath. That is what this book comes to terms with—understanding the gift of Sabbath, how we can receive it, and what receiving it does for the world.

The treasures of Scripture speak of a day of rest with resplendent glory—offering us a gift that has the power to transform our very existence. In the following pages, I would like to highlight four words or phrases the Bible uses about Sabbath that help us see not only its importance, but also, its power in transforming our lives and our world.