326 - Sabbath in the Summer
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Well, summer is in full swing, the school year schedule has gone out the window, but Sabbath doesn’t have to. Today, I am sharing 5 practical ways that we protect and keep Sabbath throughout our summer, even when it looks like nothing it does during the school year.
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As a busy mama, it can be really hard to spend time reading the Word of God like I want to. When I can't read, I listen. I simply spend a lot more time in the Word with the Dwell Bible app. And the reason I choose Dwell over and over again is how lovely it is to listen to. You can choose your voice preference, which is also your translation preference. You can also choose specific background music.
And you get to customize it anytime you listen to the Bible. I love Amber's voice with the piano and cello combo background. But honestly, I switch it up in different seasons of my life. And it helps me listen to the word of God in a new way. Whatever I choose, I do it in the morning while I drink my coffee. I take a few deep breaths, I close my eyes, and it has just been a game changer. I love the Dwell Daily Devotional, but I've also been enjoying listening through the Bible with Tara Leigh Cobble's Bible recap this year. It has been so encouraging. I'm doing it with a few friends, and it is just a great way to stay in the Word of God, especially these summer months when you're just on the go. You can go to dwellbible.com/workandplay to get 25% off the app and see how encouraging it can be for you and your relationship with God. Go to dwellbible.com/workandplay to get 25% off, and I'll leave a link in the show notes.
Okay, I'm gonna start off this episode kind of with a big picture framework of what success looks like for a believer. And I believe we can trace it all the way back to creation and how God modeled to us six days of work and one day of rest. And I know you know this and you've heard me talk about it before, but I love thinking about this and I love thinking on it and thinking about my life in regards to scripture and what scripture talks about, which is you shall work for six days and rest for one and honor the Sabbath and call it holy. And this is all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. but I think about this podcast and I think about how every single time I record a new episode, I say the intro again. And every single time it's a little bit different, but I say the words. I actually got a message on Instagram a few weeks ago and she asked, “Why do you say the intro every single time? Why don't you just record it once and then just insert it into the recording every time?” And my simple response to her was, I like it. I like to say it. I really like to be reminded what this podcast is about. This is about working and playing well, which leads to a healthy soul and a fulfilling life. And if I can boil that down into the simplest form, it goes back to the biblical precedent that we work six days in rest one. And that is such a healthy balance of work and rest and work and play. And if I'm honest, I don't do this perfectly all the time. You have heard me say that, and I wanna keep saying it because I don't want you to think that I am like I do this.
Well, all the time. Life ebbs and flows. We travel, you know, seasons change, but we do endeavor every week to honor the Sabbath. We do as a family. And this has been something that has been very important to us and our family, especially in the last three years. And during the school year, I find it's much easier to honor the Sabbath because we are all working really hard on school and we have these rhythms of the school week that we don't have in this summer.
And so if I'm honest with you today, it's that keeping the Sabbath in the summertime is hard because there's a lot of rest and a lot of play throughout the summer, more so than through the school year, right? It's summertime. We're on summer break. I'm getting a rest as a teacher because I homeschool my kids and my kids are getting a rest from school. So there's just lots of adventures and things.
During the school year, our week has a rhythm structure. You know, Friday prep naturally leads into our Sabbath dinner. And then Saturday, our Sabbath feels intentionally different. And then Sunday circles back, you know, to church and getting ready for the week and it flows. But summer is beautiful craziness. It's late nights, there's trips, there's visiting friends and family and plans are different every single week. And if we are not intentional, the Sabbath can just look like any other day.
And it can just get forgotten or it can slip away. And we can look up at the end of summer and be like, that was a great summer. Like that was so fun. And we rested and we played. But there was no intentionality with Sabbath. And here's the thing, God didn't give us Sabbath just for the school year, just for September through May. He said to set it apart every single week throughout the year, all year long. And the gift of it doesn't expire when school gets out.
And so today I want to share with you five things that we are doing to protect and keep Sabbath throughout the summer. We don't do them perfectly, but they anchor us, they bless us, and I believe they will bless you too. I was even praying through this episode before I hit record and was like, Lord, I just pray that they don't, whoever's listening doesn't get the message that this is like legalism or this is.
I don't that I'm like coming down on them if they don't do this. It's not that. It's that Sabbath is like in in our experience as a family, and me personally, Sabbath has been the greatest gift from God that I have experienced in my schedule and in our family's culture and life in the last few years, than truly anything else. It has been such a blessing. And so my encouragement is, don't listen to this thinking, I have to do Sabbath or I have to change everything about my life. Listen to it through the lens of like God is wanting to give you this really good gift that is rest and it is connection and it, I mean, it's just, it's so good. And so I just want to encourage you a little bit to stop and think about like, why would God give us a Sabbath?
Before I get into like the practical how to, why would he do this? And it's because he loves us. Like it is a gift for connection, for rest, and it has the opportunity to change your family too.
Practicing the Sabbath has caused some significant changes for us. Our family culture is different. Our marriage is better. Our kids are calmer. When you stop striving and trying to do everything every day of the week, and you stop for one day every week and let yourself rest and delight and just be with the Lord and with your family, something gets restored that you did not even know was depleted. Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote “the Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays, the weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath”. And I love this because it flips the script completely. The Sabbath is not a break from life. The Sabbath is the point. In Jewish culture, they reorient all of their days around the Sabbath. And it's the day of the week where we say, with our actions and our lives, God, you are enough. You are enough. Not my work, not what I'm doing. You are the one who sustains us. We are not the ones holding this all together. You are. So be encouraged. Try the Sabbath this this summer. It won't look like mine, and that's fine, but it needs to have some elements to it where you are resting and stopping and really enjoying and delighting in the Lord. So here are five things that we do to keep Sabbath in the summer.
Number one, we still prepare on Fridays. The anchor of our whole Sabbath practice is Friday prep. And we hold on to that even in the summer. So Friday is the day that we wrap up all of our work. Now, during the school year, that's a lot of schoolwork. And that's making sure that all of our homeschool assignments are done, everything's tidied up, cleaned up, and we do all of our chores, their household chores. I try to finish my emails and podcast work.
We try to do a big tidy. We get as far as we can. We try to finish and fold all of the laundry. I even try to prep some food for Sabbath. I will sometimes prep bacon in like dishes so I can just pop them into the oven the next morning. And then at dinner we light the candles, we have a family devotion, we sing the doxology, and we kick off Sabbath as a family with a delicious meal and playing a game after that.
But going back to Friday, that prep day is what makes the rest possible. If you walk into Saturday morning with a messy house and an overflowing inbox or laundry or whatever, resting can be hard. And the work of Friday creates the space for Saturday. So we protect that rhythm in the summer, even when everything else kind of looks different during the week. Number two, we let
Saturday looks different. That is on purpose. In summer, our Saturday Sabbath is looser than it is during the school year. In the summer, our Saturday Sabbath is very similar to how we practice Sabbath in the school year, but it might look a little bit different. I can explain. So there are certain things that we do every Saturday to make sure that Saturday looks different than the rest of the week. For example, we let the dishes pile up the whole day. Our kitchen's a mess. We don't because we don't do the dishes. And during the week, in the summer and the school year, we really like to have all of the dishes done and kind of put away. The kitchen is cleaned up before we go to bed at night, that kind of thing. I don't cook. Like we get pizza every Saturday night or if we do cook in the summer, it's gonna be something that's really life giving for me and Will. We love the Blackstone. So we might grill out on the Blackstone if that's fun or life giving, or make some homemade ice cream if we want to.
But for the most part, I don't. If Will wants to do that, that's great for him. But I like to rest from cooking on Saturday. I don't do laundry. I let that pile up on a Saturday. We have our slow morning where Will and I drink coffee on the porch while the kids watch TV and eat some snacks, and then we have a big breakfast together. But we do try to prioritize getting outside. And during the summer, it can get brutally hot. So sometimes we prioritize this.
We almost always come back as a family and have a movie night together: pizza, dessert, you know, just hanging out. And we might stretch it a little bit later. We also love to lounge around on the porch and do a read aloud as a family. We're reading through the Wing Feather saga. So we might do that in the middle of the day and turn on the ceiling fan if it's too hot to just be like in the sun. We might turn on the sprinkler on the trampoline and let the kids jump. But you know, it might look a little bit different in the summer with the things that we actually do. But the spirit of Sabbath stays the same, which is we have this framework that we follow. And that framework is we stop working, we delight in each other, and we let the Lord restore us. Will and I always intentionally have time in the word and in prayer when we are having our coffee that morning. And oftentimes we might play some songs on the piano. And I think one thing we really want to try to do more of this summer is worship, like music as a family, where we just sing a worship song or two. Okay, so yes, number two is Saturday looks a little different in the summer, but we still follow those same rhythms that set the day apart.
Number three. When we travel, we bring Sabbath with us. So we do a lot of family travel in the summer. And for a while I kind of thought Sabbath had to be suspended, or maybe we should just choose a different day of the week to honor the Sabbath. but it never really worked out great that way. And so this is how we do our best to carry Sabbath, like wherever we go.
If we are visiting family or if we are at the beach or on some vacation, we really try to prioritize keeping Saturday as Sabbath and not traveling on that day. Traveling on a Sabbath feels like way too much work for me. So I try to not travel on that day. And then we always prioritize slower mornings and not scheduling a ton of things to do that day. It's more just like restful. We skip any chores.
Again, I don't want to cook and I want it to feel restful and like we're not rushing to the next thing. So we aim for some quiet time, rest, but it's just doing all those things in a different location, which is really nice. It doesn't look like our Saturdays at home. I never feel as comfortable because I'm not in my own home, in my own bed. It feels different. and there is a little bit of work in that because we're just learning.
It's a day that says we belong to the Lord. We are resting in that, and we're gonna do that no matter where we are. Number four, we do work the other six days of the week. I know that might sound obvious, but in the summer, you can just let loose every day of the week, but we really prioritize doing work the other six days and doing kind of double work on a Friday.
Summer can easily slide into this like all vacation mode where nobody does anything and the house can get chaotic really quickly. But I really like to have a workday rhythm. And for us, Sunday is church and house prep day where we're meal planning and cleaning up and just preparing for the week. Oftentimes we're putting our clothes away, doing some loads of laundry. And then Monday through Thursday is
A little more relaxed, but the kids have daily chores that they have to do every single day, which includes tidying rooms, unloading the dishwasher, setting the table for dinner, and feeding the chickens. And then Friday is like double all of that, plus their weekly chores. So each kid has a job. Like one is a bathroom manager, one is a trash manager, and one helps prepare food for the weekend and the week. And so with that, they're doing all of those things Monday through Thursday with like the d double the work on Friday to prepare for Sabbath. And so we make sure that not only myself and Will, obviously Will's just working his normal job throughout the summer, right? Except for when we're traveling, he's working normal hours. I will do emails, podcast work, you know, all the work that I have to do on the back end.
Managing stuff for the kids, all of their correspondence with school and with camps and all of the logistical stuff of the home. All of that happens Sunday through Friday for me. And I just don't worry about any of it on Saturday. and there are some days that are just more restful than others. And that's great. I lean into that in the summer. I love reading on the porch in the afternoons. I love taking the kids to the pool. I love doing those things, but I do prioritize some kind of work every single day.
Sunday through Friday, and then that way Sabbath feels and looks different. Because work is part of what makes Sabbath so sweet. And number five, last but not least, we set it apart as holy, as holy. And this is what I don't want us to miss. Sabbath is not just a day off, it is a holy day. It is a day to listen to God's voice, to tune in to what He's trying to tell you about.
Your heart and your life. It is a day to align our stories with the greater story of the gospel and remind ourselves of that. and this looks different every Saturday, but it is a priority for us. Sometimes for me, it will look like taking a long walk and praying out loud. Like I mentioned before, sometimes we'll play a worship song or two on the piano. Sometimes we will blast Forrest Frank in the kitchen and just dance and enjoy being alive and together. Sometimes it's reading a book that really encourages us in our faith. Sometimes it's sitting outside and just being quiet and listening. For me, oftentimes it's journaling and I just journal out everything that I have I've been holding in all week and I just let it all out on paper and in prayer.
It doesn't have to be elaborate and it doesn't have to be all of these things every Saturday or every Sabbath. but it is important to set aside something intentional in our day that says, this day belongs to the Lord. This day is not just a day for me to do whatever I want. This is a day for me to connect with my creator, with my maker, to talk to him about the things that are heavy on my heart, things that I'm dreaming about, things that I need to process about my week, any hurts, any anything that I need healing from, any desires of my heart that I have. Pray for my kids, pray for my husband, pray for my work and my life, just to connect with him and rest in him. And when I do that, it reminds me of the point of the Sabbath, which is relationship. and it reminds me of the goodness of God. It reminds me that God from the beginning of time has encouraged us to stop and to rest and to enjoy, enjoy the fruits of our labor and enjoy creation and enjoy Him. And so making sure that my focus is in the right place, I think, is truly the heart of Sabbath.
In closing, Sabbath is worth protecting even in the summer. And it's easy to let it slip away in travel and in the chaos of it all. But I just want to encourage you, Sabbath anchors you, it blesses you. And the weeks that we keep it are genuinely better than the weeks that we don't. You don't have to do it perfectly. We certainly don't, but even an imperfect Sabbath, a slow morning, a family walk, a pizza night, a pause from work.
Life is a gift. Receive it. Protect it. I promise it's worth it. Thanks for listening to episode 326 of Work and Play with Nancy Ray. Everything I've mentioned today can be found in the show notes at nancyray.com/podcast/326. And you can find me at Nancy Ray or follow me at Nancy Ray on Instagram. I'm going to close with words from Abraham Joshua Heschel, who wrote, “The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays. The weekdays are for the sake of the Sabbath.” Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you next week.
