Westbury Churches Together: Holiday season

As we approach the holiday season, I am minded to think about the origin of the word holiday…Holy Day. It has long been the tradition of the church to encourage people everywhere to take a break from all their work, to take time to rest, to spend time nurturing relationships particularly with one’s own family. 

An ancient practice that is still used today is to set aside one evening and the following day in which to rest, spending time over a meal catching up with one another and to leisurely allow the conversations to develop wherever our thoughts take us. We call this Sabbath. Time set aside once a week to take time to rest and to nurture our relationships with family and friends.

In our modern culture we often find the word Sabbath used in ways that it was not intended. To some this may be funny, or ironic or even intentionally controversial however, one outcome of this holy word becoming misused is our sense of relationship to it. A rest day is necessary for us all so that we can slow down, catch up with ourselves, especially in a world where everything else has to be done now -the danger when we allow this way of thinking to dictate all that we do, is that the things that are important like spending time with loved ones often get squeezed out, even when we do spend time with them, our minds are so preoccupied that we are not fully present to them.

Perhaps ironically, there is one author, Walter Brueggemann, who suggests that we could use ‘sabbath’ as a way of subverting our culture by resisting the pressure of believing that everyone else’s priority list is more important than one’s own. Of course, we all work to deadlines, but we are also in need of time off. Time to let our minds wonder, to read, play games, work with a hobby, sleep, exercise, and time to make deeper connections with family and friends. May you and you families be richly blessed during the forthcoming holi-days.

Grace and peace,

Rev’d Caroline Husband