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The REST of Your Life: A Creative Wrestles With Sabbath

The REST of Your Life: A Creative Wrestles With Sabbath

Last updated on: October 17, 2026 at 12:15 am by David Weiss

The REST of Your Life: A Creative Wrestles With Sabbath 2026-10-17T00:15:54-04:00 David Weiss

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When you're burning the candle at both ends, don't light the middle. Generated by Google Gemini from a prompt by the author.

When you’re burning the candle at both ends, don’t light the middle. Generated by Google Gemini from a prompt by the author.

This week I had a conversation with a good friend from church. He was describing a marathon work week coming up, with demands coming from all sides. He’s a bit younger than me, but all my old mind and body could think was “That’s insane!” It was then that I coined a phrase. “When you’re already burning the candle at both ends, don’t light the middle.” To be honest, it was a “physician heal thyself” kind of moment. I’ve been doing it for years. I guess you could say I have a hard time with rest. How about you?

I Have a Problem

The Bible speaks of a Sabbath day. It’s a day of rest and worship. The problem for me is twofold. First, I’ve spent most of my life in creative professions, and the reason I went into that is because I love to create. I’ve always loved to make art and more recently I’ve come to really love writing. So while these things have been my work they are also what I do to unwind and, dare I say, rest. Secondly, the normal day of worship, Sunday in my faith tradition, Is the day when I present the message and service I have worked to put together for a large part of the week. My work is also an act of worship. For these reasons, I can find a day of rest to be a difficult thing to do. The things I do have become both my rest and my worship.

Not a Complaint

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not whining here. I am fully aware of how blessed I am to be able to do work I love for a living. My issue is one of obedience. I want to be as obedient as I can to the Lord. Jesus, in John 14:21 said, **“**Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” I want to obey Him, because I love Him.At the same time, I want to use my gifts to serve Him because I love Him.

Don’t Get Me Wrong

I’m not trying to be a hyper-legalist here, I am fully aware that my work in preaching on Sunday is not breaking the Sabbath. In Matthew 12:5 Jesus said, **“**Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?” I would argue that the priests of that day had much more strenuous job than today’s preaching pastors, because of the part of their work that revolved around slaughtering and preparing sacrifices.

Harvesting Grain?

This interaction started because some of Jesus’ disciples had pulled a few heads of grain on the Sabbath and ate them because they were hungry, and some Pharisees took Jesus to task about it as if the disciples got out their tractor and harvester and brought in the back 40. This was not harvesting. It was hunger, but the hyper legalistic Pharisees were looking for reasons to condemn Jesus. Jesus wasn’t having it. He reminded them that their hero, King David ate the show bread in the temple. This would have been a far more serious offense, yet David was still well regarded by the very people bringing accusation against Jesus and his disciples.

Looking for Trouble

A foundational belief of Christianity is that Jesus never sinned. This means what Jesus said and did and taught was right. The Pharisees didn’t want to believe that Jesus was and is the Messiah, so they went to great lengths to find Jesus guilty of any infraction. The accusation against Jesus’ disciples was about the same as accusing someone of breaking Sabbath, because they moved food from their hands to their mouths. Feeding yourself could hardly be called sin. When this accusation came to nothing, the Pharisees sought out something else.

“Pets” Before People

Jesus went into the Synagogue where there was a man with a withered hand. I’m not sure what his actual condition was. but it left him with a basically nonfunctioning hand. The Pharisees decided to use the man’s condition as a test. They asked Jesus. “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” and the Bible calls out their motivation “—so that they might accuse him.” Jesus immediately turned it around on them, saying, ““Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12:11-12) After this, Jesus said, “Stretch out your hand.” and the man was instantly healed when he did.

Four Words

With four words from Jesus, and no physical work, the healing touch God fell upon this man and made him whole. Now if I had been one of those Pharisees, I would like to hope I would have repented of my accusation, and believed. Their hearts were so hard that they conspired to kill Jesus instead. I pray I never become legalistic like those guys were, On the other hand, neither do I want to be lawless, because that doesn’t honor God and I want to honor God and I want to obey Him.

The Law

God commanded the Sabbath in the Ten Commandments, saying “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8) The pattern was simple, six days to labor, one day to rest. God established the pattern Himself in the creation of the world. After creating for six says, He rested on the seventh. He later established this as a pattern for agriculture, in that every seventh year, the land was to be given a year’s break, and when Judah fell to the Babylonians, one of the reasons God gave for their fall was because the people neglected to give the land its Sabbath. (See 2 Chronicles 36:20-21). It seems God is pretty serious about rest.

But Wait There’s More…

Do you know what the penalty was in the law of Moses for breaking the Sabbath. Exodus 31:14 says, **“**You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.” Yes, folks the penalty for breaking Sabbath in the law of Moses was death. And yes, I know, you may want to shout to me, that we are not under the law, but under grace. And believe me, I know and I am grateful for it. At the same time, if God took rest that seriously, maybe we should at least ask, “Why?”

The Importance of Rest

When I consider that question, two related things come to mind, and these were hard learned lessons for me, that I intend to share for free. You see, there was a time in my life, where I was so busy and working so hard as a bivocational pastor, that I had mild, stress induced, heart attack. The first thing I learned is that acting as if everything depends on me, especially where it relates to ministry, is a dangerous form of idolatry. Oh, we are supposed to be faithful in our efforts, but ministry depends on God, not us.

Our Trust Needs to Be in Him Alone.

Relatedly, Sabbath allows us to see that the world does not revolve around us. We can see that if we stop and take a break, the world will continue to turn, and everything will keep going just as God intends. Again, it doesn’t all depend on us, but it also shows that God is totally dependable in every area of our lives, and we can depend on Him. When we see and acknowledge that, it will ease our stress, and build our faith, and guess what that gives us? The two things to which Sabbath rest is supposed to be dedicated, rest and worship.

Still Struggling?

You may want to point me to the people who need to work on the day of rest and worship. Nothing in here is meant to condemn them. As a matter of fact. I thank God for them, especially medical people and first responders. You might want to point me to Mark’s account of the event we looked at in Matthew 12, where Jesus reminds the Pharisees, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” I know Jesus said that, but please note, Jesus isn’t telling them to break the Sabbath here. He’s trying to break them of their legalism. Yes, there are times where the Sabbath need to be temporarily broken, but rest is still urgently needed.

The One who made our bodies knows their limitations, and if the God of the Universe took a break to rest, what makes you think you can get by without one? Yes, that was directed as much at myself as it was at you dear reader. More than that, we were created to worship, and when we put God on the back burner, the thing we moved to the front burner will likely become our object of worship. A day of rest and worship allows us to refocus and reconnect. Yes, I can find the creative work that I do very relaxing, and yes, preparing for ministry can be a real act of worship for me. But both of those things can also steal my rest and make me dependent on my own strength. Neither of those is good. I need to rest and rest in Him. We all do.

Sabbath rest was not meant to be a legalism. It was meant to be a gift. Enjoy it.

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About Dave Weiss

Dave Weiss is a pastor and a traveling speaker. He has written and/or illustrated many self-published books and has his MDIV and DMIN, both with a concentration in Creative Arts Ministry. He is married to his wife Dawn and has two adult sons and a grandson named David. You can read more about the author here.

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