It’s in the nature of work that you must put one aside to do another. Sometimes it’s possible to multi-task, but generally, for me anyway, working at anything requires concentration and uninterrupted chunks of time. Call me a binge worker, if you’d like, but once I get going on something it’s hard to pull away.

Today, the temperature rose, the sun shone, garden blooms beckoned and my concentration was broken. But I was already feeling satisfied with the last two months of work and I could afford to leave it for a bit, even to the point of writing again.

It was a good winter for hunkering down. The steady state of snow and cold gave me permission to hibernate in my computer den. It’s not for me to be distracted by sunny, southern resorts or north-country winter sports, so I buckled down to long days of focused work. Even the Winter Olympics and the puzzle table failed to lure me away.

The task at hand had been daunting us for a couple of years already. My wife and I, both the eldest in our families, naturally assumed possession of our parents’ family albums and archives. Digitizing these had begun already and gained momentum when my wife retired a few years ago. But the whole thing was a mess of flash drives, hard drives, picture piles and paper files. I desperately wanted to put these in some semblance of order.

But that’s a story all on its own. Suffice it to say, after much sorting, scanning, thinking, naming, renaming and moving, my files and folders are in order and I can give it a rest. That’s also in the nature of work (some of it anyway) — jobs get done so you can move on to another. And with a job well done comes satisfaction. I’m fortunate, in that regard, to have had a career in renovation. With a long trail of construction behind me — most of which is still good to go — I have always had reason to be pleased with the progress.

Here in Middledom, my job is to revalue, restore and represent the works of others — works that have long since been finished. The making of my father’s stories, the many family memoirs and multiple, carefully curated photo albums — these all required concentrated effort and perseverance once upon a time. But now, finished though they may be, they were not much good anymore sitting in a box or on a shelf. I could not help but feel that these good works deserved to be better known and that I have some responsibility for putting them out there.

The Sabbath

Taking a break from work to gather with our men’s Bible study group, the topic of the ten commandments brought to mind again my own, much earlier work on the “Sabbath”. Like so much else that I’m dealing with, this academic paper has long been interred in its communal coffin (AKA file box), this one for nigh on 45 years. No more! I was in the groove and was quickly able to resurrect it with my google lens and put it up on this website.

I wrote this essay, “Sabbath: Seal of the Covenant”, for my ICS Biblical Foundations course and submitted it in May of 1981. At 23 pages, it’s a minor work by academic standards, but still a significant effort within my oeuvre — though I don’t remember doing it. Reading it again, I was pleased to see how durable it is. I think it too deserves to be given a read.

The Sabbath commandment, of course, takes aim at our work, mine included. So I felt it speaking to me again from the other side of a 45-year wide, yawning chasm of work-a-day living that greedily swallowed up every bit of physical toil, sweat and mental exercise that I had to offer. And here I am, still toiling away. Have I transgressed? Should I be more at rest? That is the question.

But, says the paper, the Sabbath is not about resting (or not), it’s about ceasing — and that helps me out. The essay’s primary thesis is that less attention should be paid to the nature of a Sabbath rest and more attention given to the quality of the work that precedes it. The point of God’s resting on the seventh day was that in six days of work he had perfected creation — nothing more needed to be done. The point of our resting is to be reassured that God is in on our side all the six and seventh days of our lives — that what we do is good enough.

Now, with 45 years of toil under my belt, I think I am better able to grasp this ideal of Sabbath rest than I was in my student-novice days. So, while the bulk of my Sabbath essay still rings true to me, its too quick Conclusion now sticks in my craw. Sabbath practice should not disparage me or the good work that I do and have done.

I recognize the phrases I once used as being Biblical and characteristically Calvinistic; ‘man’ recognizes “the futility of his own works” and “man’s six days of labour are so emptied of goodness by his humanity and sin that such labour need not even be attempted.” This lurching towards total depravity is a well known theme in my tradition. I do understand and accept the theoretical premise — the theology, but I abhor its abuse. So, allow me this addendum.

Labour of love

When, for a Sabbath, we rest from our labours, God (yes God) sees that those labours are good — and so should we. That’s the clearest analogy to the Sabbath creation motif. We must recognize that our work can be and often is good, and we do well to attempt it — to do it as well as we can by drawing from our well of gifts, strength and determination, with spirit and love.

Yes, such work would be futile without God. But we are not without God! As image bearers of God, we have been given given gifts, strength, determination, spirit and love precisely so that we can be as creative as God. God just loves that, and so should we. God is satisfied with what he created and we should be satisfied with what we create, every week again.

Any one of us can only do small parts of anything so grand, but, however small it be, every bit of good work we do deserves to be given a rest. And if the work be bad, all the more reason to stop doing it. Ceasing (’sabathing’) work is to celebrate what is good and finished and to cast off what is bad and unproductive. It is to know that what we do with God is enough and what we do without God is too much. It is to recognize and emulate the Creator in our creations.

Finding rest

My own ambitions are lofty and my work is extensive. Sometimes it feels overwhelming, but I keep chipping away at it, knowing that each small part is good enough to contribute to something whole. Like most of you, what I do is not essential or extraordinary but it is worthwhile, by virtue of the God who goes with each of us and whose creativity inspires all of us.

Like me, the people whose work I feature on Middledom were not labouring under illusions of grandeur. They were content with a limited audience and modest about their own ability. But still, they kept at it till it was finished, and then gave it a rest, not because it was “futile” or “empty of goodness” but because every little bit matters.

I constantly regret that I did not or could not pay attention to works that I have now collected while I could yet talk to their creators about that work. My wife is now processing an extraordinarily lengthy and detailed account by her father of a guided trip to Israel in 1991 — one of the great highlights of this curious and knowledgeable man’s life. But we were all too busy with our own lives then to share in his excitement and give this work it’s due. And now, when we’re finally getting to it, he’s already been gone for a year.

Perhaps Sabbath is fundamentally corporate in nature. In our rest we need to recognize that our lives are dependent on, and enriched by all those around us, not just by God. Perhaps Sabbathing should be an occasion for mutual encouragement as well as for worship. If we pay more attention to what others have done, maybe we would feel less beleaguered by what is undone and be better able to rest.

With the attention I give to the lives that have been lived before me, I hope to contribute to this Sabbath appreciation for what God has wrought through us. What I glean from the often beleaguered lives of my forbears gives me pause to consider and reason to promote the work of the people. The pages I publish pick up each labour of love and gives it a rest. That work and my work, does not need to be more than it is. It does not need to go viral, be famous, make money or receive plaudits. It is enough. We are enough. God gives us a rest.

On this weekend in particular, I celebrate my uncle Sense (Stan) de Jong (1934-2026), whose chronicles were among the first that I could enable as a webmaster. He fussed a great deal about those memoirs and stories, but he too came to a place where he could give it a rest. And now, like so many before him, he has gone to his final resting place.

Well done, you good and faithful servants. May you experience Sabbath peace now — and then perfectly ever more.