Wait for it...

The first question is not “What is a sabbatical?” That might be the most frequently asked question in a culture where sabbatical has been up until very recently the province of academia. But it isn’t the first question. The first question is almost always: “Why sabbatical?”

And it’s a good and honest question. People just don’t get a sabbatical. Although most companies have some kind of vacation policy, an increasing number of people don’t even take the vacation time they are offered. Whether there is an implicit penalty to be paid for time out of the office, or whether one’s internal hard drive doesn’t allow for down time in the midst of the pursuit of the greater good (whatever that might be), or whether vacation time has become a priceless commodity to be hoarded against the inevitable rainy day, what used to be a solid two weeks off sometime in August has become a day here or there at best.

Remember that bumper sticker “Jesus is coming. Look busy.” Exactly. Wouldn’t want to be caught napping when the Lord comes in glory riding on the clouds.  And the secular version is every bit as insidious. Don’t just stand there, we are told. Do something. And so we do something. And then we do something else. And then we keep right on doing…something. Wouldn’t want anyone to think that we are doing nothing at all when there is so much that needs to be done.

A pastor’s life is like that. There are tremendous, non-stop demands on her time. And they are scattershot demands, all over the place. It’s not unusual to go from a prayer breakfast to a staff meeting to bible study to a hospice visit to a vigil at city hall to an adult seminar to a meeting of the board of trustees. And that’s Monday.

Woe is me, right? So busy, so burdened, so booked up, so consequential, so essential. Crocodile tears abound. Let me just get done with this one little thing and we’ll do lunch, say, a month from now?

Why sabbatical? Because sabbatical says no. To all of this pretension to importance and indispensability, sabbatical says no. Knock it off. Don’t just do something; stand there for a while instead. The sun will rise. The world will turn. Jesus will come again. And again. And again. And again—as he does every day. The great blessing of sabbatical's "no" is the time and the space to remember that.