Have you ever noticed that your body and spirit (your conscious awareness) are not always in sync? When this happens your life becomes either a jumbled string of “out of body” experiences, or you have body experiences that fail to engage your spirit. This kind of living is “desynchronized” and “inharmonious.” It doesn’t sound very good to say that I’m living an inharmonious life. It is so much better when there is balance, synchronization, and harmony.
Navajos use the word Hózhó to describe the harmony of body and spirit that is needed for one to live a balanced life.
The words I’m using may sound New Age-ish to you, but they are not related to that in any way. I’m not talking about self-help forms of mind altering meditation or some kind of mind cleansing exercise that invites spirit guides to come in and take you on a journey. Everything I refer to is scripture-based and truth focused.
There’s a little spot in the road on California’s Pacific Coast Highway (just north of Morro Bay) called Harmony. I think it has a population of 18 souls and mainly consists of art studios and some stores that sell art (pottery, wind chimes and other forms of visual art). Every time we stop there I enjoy it because I love being in creative spaces.
This may be a stretch for some, but I’d like to suggest that the idea of Sabbath is about finding and experiencing harmony in a world that is desynchronized and inharmonious. Humanity is out of sync with the universe—which has devastating consequences. Every cemetery is a testament of our out-of-phase alignment with heaven’s laws. The universe is in harmony with the principles of life—which means that every other planet or community, except ours, embraces God as the undisputed author and replenisher of life, and they celebrate this by worshipping and honoring him.
Our first parents chose to question God’s intentions and words, which resulted in distrust, acrimony, and a desynchronized state of mind. The evening news is a litany of reports that detail the consequences of being out-of-phase with the divine order. Religious-speak calls it “sin.” Many of us call it “doing my own thing.” Reality calls it death. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
Sabbath provides us with time and space for God to synchronize our bodies with our spirits in ways that are healing. It’s kind of like those special lights that people who live in dark and dreary climates use to keep their emotions and body’s in sync. It’s called “Seasonal Affective Disorder” or SAD. Wikipedia describes it as, “a mood disorder subset in which people who typically have normal mental health throughout most of the year exhibit depressive symptoms at the same time each year. It is commonly, but not always, associated with the reductions or increases in total daily sunlight hours that occur during the winter or summer. Common symptoms include sleeping too much, having little to no energy, and overeating. The condition in the summer can include heightened anxiety.”
Some question whether SAD is a real thing, but according to Mayo Clinic, the prescribed treatment for SAD is “light therapy (phototherapy), psychotherapy and medications.” Of course the severity of the symptoms varies with each person. But winter with its gloomy dark days negatively affects some people.
SAD and the Sabbath
In the spiritual realm I think of SAD in a different way. For me, it stands for, “Sabbath Affective Disorder,” because without Sabbath, many experience the symptoms of being out-of-phase with God and the universe. The symptoms for spiritual SADness include heightened anxiety, depression, scattered thoughts, and exhaustion. Of course there are more.
Sabbath is not a magical pill or hocus pocus moment that mysteriously energizes us to deal with whatever we have to face. Rather, it is a chunk of time and space that affords us with an opportunity to enter into relational dialogue with our Creator.
For Adam and Eve life would have never stopped if they had remained aligned with heaven’s agenda. They learned the hard way that God can be trusted and that he actually did have their best interest at heart. But even so, the Sabbath has not lost its efficacy and healing potential. When we honor the original intent of the Sabbath and spend it seeking harmony with God and our fellow human beings, we are moving toward a way of life that allows our bodies to catch up with our spirits.
“Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Work six days and do everything you need to do. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to God, your God. Don’t do any work—not you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your servant, nor your maid, nor your animals, not even the foreign guest visiting in your town. For in six days God made Heaven, Earth, and sea, and everything in them; he rested on the seventh day. Therefore God blessed the Sabbath day; he set it apart as a holy day” (Exodus 20:8-11, The Message).
The world’s problems are not what most people think—war, crime, corruption, sex trafficking, and hate (to name a few). The things we think are the problems are really just the symptoms. Our individual and collective problem is that we are out of sync with God—the North Star of all goodness. Like Adam and Eve, we keep trying to go it alone, which results in an inharmonious version of life that eventually self destructs.
The Prescription
The solution begins with a simple prescription, and a commitment to act, or should I say, to not act?
“Be still and know (recognize, understand) that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations! I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalm 46:10, AMP).
I like how this same passage is rendered in the Message paraphrase:
“Attention, all! See the marvels of God! He plants flowers and trees all over the earth, bans war from pole to pole, breaks all the weapons across his knee. Step out of the traffic! Take a long, loving look at me, your High God, above politics, above everything (Psalm 46:10, The Message).
You have permission to slow down. To be still, and to swim against the flow. Find harmony with God and the universe by being counter-culture (which simply consists of believing his words and allowing him to transform you into his image).
Rich DuBose writes from Northern California
On the web at: richdubose.com. All Rights Reserved © 2025. Join me on Blue Sky @spiritrenew.bsky.social.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.