“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” This is a popular saying in this high-tech computer, smartphone age. We need encouraged to disconnect a bit and give some things a rest.
Have you ever had a telephone IT professional/technician tell you to “turn it off for 20 seconds, then back on?” Or, “IT Support here, have you tried turning it off and on again?” And the more brilliant of their troubleshooting questions, “Is it definitely plugged in?”
I may sound like I’m making fun, but often those highly trained technicians hit upon the simplest truth, that if all else fails, disconnect. Turn the blasted thing off for a bit.
As the first sentence above says, even our brains benefit from a time-out, a disconnect, or down-time. God, in fact built in down-time, after six days of creation, which we label Sabbath.
In the book of beginnings, Genesis, the Sabbath, or seventh day was established as a day of rest. Most Christian churches observe the Sabbath on Sunday, but Jews and a few outstanding Christian denominations observe the Sabbath, as it was established, on Saturday.
Then came Jesus, the consummate Jew who made it clear in the biblical book of Mark, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” This was in defense of some of his disciples, who plucked grain for some food along their path, and were accused by some rule-police of breaking the Sabbath.
But what I remember most about Jesus’ explanation of Sabbath rules had something in my Sunday-school recollection, to do with pulling your wayward goat out of a well or off of a hanging precipice. As it turns out, when I looked it up, it was an ox in a well in the book of Luke and a sheep in a pit, in the book of Matthew. Oh well, I got the gist of the sentiment.
Jesus clarified that if we must work on our usual Sabbath day, it’s okay because God the Father made Sabbath as a day of rest, for our benefit. But it’s not a crisis, as my husband would say, if you must do some necessary work on that day, as long as you observe some sort of day of rest. The respite is for you.
I admit we have had to dig a few goats out of sticky situations on our Sunday day of rest. We have had to do the rare yard maintenance at the home of our loved one because of weather constraints and our own yard maintenance schedule. We meant no offense to those of you resting on that day.
So, a spiritual Sabbath is tradition. But I wonder if maybe we should establish a technological sabbath as well. Just turn it off once in a while.
I reluctantly observe momentary sabbaths from technology. I admit, I only do this when I’m forced to, by a glitch. These brief sabbaths, however, as well as the physical and spiritual ones are extremely beneficial for my mental health and overall well-being.
Do you ever want disconnect and silence so badly that you resort to rudeness to get it? For instance, maybe someone is going over something repetitively, “like a broken record,” screeching and scratching like “fingernails on a chalkboard?”
Perhaps you can’t take it anymore and you picture yourself saying “won’t’ you give it a rest!” This is fractionally less rude than saying, “shut up!” When someone goes on and on and on and won’t stop, in order to get them to stop, we want to unplug them like a jukebox in mid-record, brought to a screeching halt.
Don’t you wish, once in a blue moon, that you could unplug and disconnect the world, stop the incessant chatter, just for a blessed, peaceful moment? Just to catch your breath or exhale, “world, would you just give it a rest!”
I wonder what it would be like in today’s highly buzzed culture if we gave the gift of sabbath rest to one another. What would it be like if we extended to each other rest from the usual twenty-four-seven expectation to be what we want them to be, do what we want them to do, keep up the pace and stay turned on, tuned in, activated, and jazzed to serve and produce and give and give and give, to my cause?
The expression, “give it a rest,” always appears as a command in the imperative form. The phrase must be born out of the supply and demand of commerce, as in, “I demand and you supply.” It’s quite tyrannical and I would like you to note that this woman has taken a sociocultural “chill pill,” and you can “rest assured” that I demand nothing from you today.
(Postscript – This is as she hands her column to her partner for proofreading and says, “I’m on a deadline, so please read now.”)