The Sabbath as a remedy for human restlessness

Abstract

Considering that many people today suffer from restlessness, it would be very helpful to remind ourselves of a very old, very simple but very effective remedy: rest on the Sabbath. In the Christian tradition, Sabbath-keeping often only focused on its spiritual aspects. This article has focused on the benefit of rediscovering the gift of the Sabbath as ‘a delight to the soul and a delight for the body’ (Heschel). It has shown how we can explicitly learn from the Jewish tradition of holistic Sabbath observance. The article consists of four parts: the phenomenon of human restlessness, ten different facets of the Sabbath in the Old Testament, a short section on the history of pro-Sabbath and anti-Sabbath attitudes within the Christian churches and a concluding section about applying the basic principles of the Sabbath in modern life for the sake of a good work-life balance. Examples from the German context are included.Die Sabbat as kuur teen menslike rusteloosheid. Wanneer die hedendaagse rusteloosheid van mense in ag geneem word, het dit waarde om onsself aan ‘n baie ou, eenvoudige dog effektiewe maatreël tot herstel te herinner, naamlik om op die sabbat te rus. In die Christelike tradisie fokus sabbatsonderhouding dikwels slegs op godsdienstige aspekte. Hierdie artikel het gefokus op die wins in die herontdekking van die sabbatsgeskenk as ‘n ‘behae vir die siel en die liggaam’ (Heschel). Dit toon duidelik hoe ons uit die Joodse tradisie van ‘n holistiese sabbatsonderhouding kan leer. Die artikel het bestaan uit vier dele, naamlik die verskynsel van menslike rusteloosheid, tien verskillende fasette van die sabbat in die Ou Testament, ‘n kort historiese oorsig oor pro- en teen-standpunte van die Christelike kerk ten opsigte van die sabbat, en ten slotte die toepassing van basiese sabbatsbeginsels in die moderne lewe ter handhawing van ‘n goeie balans tussen werk en lewe. Voorbeelde uit die Duitse konteks is ook ingesluit.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 8 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.