Andrew G. Stanton - Saturday, April 25, 2026

I’ve been thinking about Sabbath a little differently lately.

Not in a theological sense exactly, more just how it actually shows up day to day.

Because the way I always understood it was basically: stop working, take a break, don’t do anything productive for a while.

Which sounds fine, but it never really solved the problem.

I can stop working and still feel completely restless. If anything, sometimes it’s worse. I’ll step away from what I’m doing and my mind just keeps going — thinking about what’s unfinished, what needs to happen next, whether what I’m doing is actually enough.

So stopping the work doesn’t necessarily create rest.

It just removes the visible part of it.

There’s something underneath the work that’s harder to shut off.

That sense that things need to move forward, that something has to come from this, that it needs to lead somewhere. And I don’t think that instinct is entirely wrong. It makes sense to want your work to matter.

But it turns into something else pretty quickly.

It starts to feel like something you’re carrying around instead of something you’re just doing.

When I look at Sabbath through that lens, it doesn’t really come across as a rule about what you can or can’t do.

It feels more like an invitation to let go of that weight for a bit.

Not because everything is done, but because it doesn’t all depend on you in the way it feels like it does.

Even the idea of God “resting” doesn’t read like recovery.

It reads more like completion.

Not exhaustion, just a stopping point where nothing else needs to be forced.

And I think that’s the part I’ve been missing.

Because for me, the harder thing isn’t stopping work.

It’s stepping away without feeling like I should still be doing something.

Without mentally staying attached to it.

Without running through the same loop of whether it’s working or not.

What I’ve noticed, at least in small moments, is that when that pressure lifts even a little, the work itself doesn’t go away.

I still write. I still think about what I’m building.

It just feels different.

Less urgent. Less tied to outcome. Not constantly being checked and rechecked in my head.

I don’t think Sabbath is about disconnecting from meaningful work.

If anything, it probably brings you back to it in a healthier way.

But without the need for it to prove something all the time.

So maybe rest isn’t really about doing nothing.

Maybe it’s about not carrying everything while you’re doing something.

I don’t have a clean definition for that.

But I can tell when I’m closer to it.

And when I’m not.