
If you doubt the importance of Sabbath, just run a quick Google search for terms like “exhaustion” or “burnout” or the various mental disorders that accompany the habits of our society. This is what crashing back down to earth looks like for a society. It’s a recurring blight on our culture. We must gain an appreciation for God’s gift of the Sabbath. We need to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, God has written down what we need for genuine human flourishing and built it into the actual fabric of the created order.
The ultimate solution to the existential alienation that plagues us is to seek healing not from ourselves, others, or our broken culture, but from the God who loves us. To be sure, he uses counselors and therapists as agents of healing, but our greatest need is for intimacy with him.
Although this new simple at-home lifestyle amid the coronavirus pandemic is largely counter-cultural, it aligns with a fascinating Dutch discipline that has numerous proven benefits from which I believe we can grow during this pandemic if we allow ourselves to get comfortable in the uncomfortable.