# The Rest of God ![rw-book-cover](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5143hLT1OxL._SL200_.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[Mark Buchanan]] - Full Title: The Rest of God - Category: #books ## Highlights - I learned to keep Sabbath in the crucible of breaking it. ([Location 119](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=119)) - All this is to say: you can't help but not like your job some days. God made it that way. ([Location 245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=245)) - whatever youcan do with a clean conscience, you can do to the glory of God. No work is so menial that it cannot be rendered as worship. ([Location 373](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=373)) - Now I was really out of my depth. My temptation was to look at my watch, announce their hour was up, thank them for coming, and show them the door. Instead, I started praying, eyes open: "Oh God, what now? It's my turn. I'm supposed to be wise. I'm supposedto help these people. But I've got nothing to give. Lord, you see their plight. You see mine. I'm sorry I thought I was equal to this. I'm not. You are. Help." ([Location 404](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=404)) - Under God's economy, nothing really changes until our minds do.Transformation is the fruit of a changed outlook. First our minds are renewed, and then we are transformed, and then everything is different, even if it stays the same. ([Location 438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=438)) - God is more interested in changing your thinking than in changing your circumstances. He wants you to have the same attitude as and the very mind of Jesus Christ (see Phil. 2:5-8). ([Location 440](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=440)) - All this touches on the art of Sabbath-keeping. What makes Sabbath time-whether a day or a year, an afternoon or a week, a month or a moment-different from all other time? Simple: a shift in our thinking, an altering of our attitudes. ([Location 444](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=444)) - First we change our minds. Before we keep a Sabbath day, we cultivate a Sabbath heart.A Sabbath heart sanctifies time. This is not a ritual. It's a perspective. And it's not a shift in circumstances-you still have the same job tomorrow, the same problems with your aging parents or wayward children, the same battle looming in the church. But you make a deliberate choice to shift point of view, to come at your circumstances from a fresh angle and with greater depth of field. You choose to see your life otherwise, through a different lens, from a different standpoint, with a different mind-set. ([Location 445](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=445)) - Sabbath time is unlike every and any other time on the clock and the calendar. We are more intimate with it. We are more thankful for it. We are more protective of it and generous with it. We become more ourselves in the presence of Sabbath: more vulnerable, less afraid. More ready to confess, to be silent, to be small, to be valiant. ([Location 466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=466)) - One of the largest obstacles to true Sabbath-keeping is leisure. It is what cultural historian Witold Rybczynski calls "waiting for the weekend," where we see work as only an extended interlude between our real lives. Leisure is what Sabbath becomes when we no longer know how to sanctify time. Leisure is Sabbath bereft of the sacred. It is a vacation-literally, a vacating, an evacuation. As Rybczynski sees it, leisure has become despotic in our age, enslaving us and exhausting us, demanding from us more than it gives.2 ([Location 469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=469)) - Consider your ways. That's a wise Sabbath Liturgy. And let me make it even more specific: consider your thoughts and attitudes, the pattern of them, their shape and drift. Are they leading you where you want to go? Plot their trajectory: will they land you in a place you care to live? ([Location 519](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=519)) - Stop. Look. Look close.Notice the sun falling slantwise through the window, the dust's slow dance in it. Or touch the threadbare edges of your chair's upholstery, and remember that day it arrived new, smelling synthetic,clashing a bit with the paint on the walls. Ah, now look at the intricate folds of your child's ear, the way light bleeds through the thin, taut flesh of it. Gaze outside and see the wind spin larch leaves like fish lures. Watch the darkness sift down the hillside and gather in the fir boughs.See it all. Like Adam, name it. ([Location 693](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=693)) - As the rabbis are fond of saying, more than Israel ever kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath kept Israel. I would alter this slightly: to theextent that they kept Sabbath, Sabbath kept them. Sabbath living orients us toward that which, apart from rest, we will always miss. ([Location 714](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=714)) - Either God is good and in control, or it all depends on you. Sietze Buning's poem "Obedience" is a quiet meditation on the surprising fruit such trust in God can bear in time. ([Location 757](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=757)) - "Asian," said Lucy, "you're bigger.""That is because you are older, little one," answered he."Not because you are?""I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."'That's a perfect description of those who train themselves in God's goodness and sovereignty: every year you grow, you find him bigger. ([Location 794](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=794)) - Are you in the midst of a situation where, as you pray, you find yourself putting the problem first? If so, you're starting where youshould end. You're rehearsing the problem, making it seem larger than it is, when what you need to do is rehearse God's greatness and bigness. Then the problem shrinks to its right portions. Oh, by the way...As a Sabbath Liturgy, I recommend practicing the sovereignty of God. Today when you pray, start with God. Survey what he has made. Recite what he has done. Proclaim who he is.And after you have been with Jesus long enough, and feel your courage brimming, and he looks bigger, see if there's still an Oh, by the way ... ([Location 877](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0028K2XVO&location=877))