Walter Brueggemann came to speak in our town at my alma mater recently. Like someone said on their Facebook page about this event, you are either saying “Wow!” or “Who on earth is that?”

I wonder how God “rested” on the seventh day. Brueggemann says, “God got refreshed.” Psalm 23 describes rest as restoring your soul. It is that vital to our existence.

If you went to a Christian high school or college like I did you likely would have heard your Bible or theology professors sounding highfalutin quoting him. Maybe your minister drops his name now and then. I hope you don’t think I was just name dropping. Dr. Brueggemann, author of 58 books including Bible commentaries, was truly worth digging out of my cozy home on a rainy January night to hear.

Why? Because he encouraged his audience to quit the pervasive drive in our culture to accumulate more and more. He acknowledged that this is a deep and difficult chasm to get across. This is achieved by nourishing more feelings of gratitude for our abundance. And then allowing ourselves—nay eking out of our busy schedules time to check out, take a nap, do nothing.

With slightly fuzzy white hair and beard framing a fairly bald head, the 78-yar-old Brueggemann lived up to his billing. Brueggemann is like the stereotype of a favorite and beloved, slightly “mad” professor/preacher come to life. (Check out YouTube videos of him lecturing to enjoy his style.)

Brueggemann had a very simple definition of Sabbath: work stoppage.

I’m hearing this message from a lot of other sources these days. My church has used Wayne Mueller’s popular book Sabbath Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives (Bantam, 2000) for a retreat and study book this year. Mueller uses the term “Sabbath” in the broad definition of rest and not so much solely in the Jewish or Christian sense of the word, but yet tapping into both those traditions as well as other world religions. Mueller says our culture has lost this essential rhythm which supposes that doing something—anything—is better than doing nothing. “Because of our desire to succeed, to meet these ever growing expectations, we do not rest. Because we do not rest, we lose our way.”

In spite of hearing and reading all these wonderful permissions to chill, I’m having a hard time with it. Our pastor emeritus talks about how he gets up an hour early before any of the day’s obligations start so that he can just sit on his deck or in his den, drink coffee, and enjoy being with God. What a gift. He says he did this even in the days he had four daughters at home and a busy pastor’s schedule.

I do get up early and I love the early morning, but my problem is I naturally gravitate toward an activity that is also on my to-do list: writing, checking email, checking Facebook, exercising, reading. I can rarely just lay or sit there and do nothing.

I wonder how God “rested” on the seventh day. Brueggemann says, “God got refreshed.” Psalm 23 describes rest as restoring your soul. It is that vital to our existence.

Another powerful thought from Brueggemann is “A society that does not practice Sabbath is a society of depleted selves. And the less self I have, the more I want to surround myself with signs and symbols of value to keep persuading myself that there is something good going on in my life even if it is relatively empty at the center.”

So, cyclically, Sabbath is one way to move from accumulation to abundance. “Sabbath is a deliberate, disciplined pause in the narrative of accumulation,” said Brueggemann. “We are most imitating God when we trust creation enough to rest.”

And maybe that’s enough of Brueggemann, God and Mueller for one column. I think I’ll just go spend an hour in rest. Think I can do it?

For more on leisure and our need for it, listen to the Shaping Families radio program for an interview with Evan Oswald on “Enjoying Leisure” online at www.ShapingFamilies.com after Feb. 3.