A Sabbath Summer, Part 3: Reflecting and Savoring

In this final episode of the Sabbath Summer series, Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen guide us into the often-overlooked final movement of Sabbath: reflection.

We began with anticipation—the courageous act of imagining rest. Then moved into participation—embracing play even in the midst of reality’s messiness. And now, we arrive at reflection—savoring what has been.

But reflection doesn’t always come easily. In a culture that pushes us toward constant motion, pausing to ponder our day, our summer, or even a moment of joy can feel… unnatural. Or even risky. As Rachael shares, sometimes the goodness we taste is hard to hold. It intensifies longing. It reminds us of what’s still broken. And yet—it strengthens hope.

Dan offers a glimpse into his own end-of-day rhythm with Becky. He reminds us that reflection is not about correction, but recollection—a gathering of the day’s moments to see what God is forming in us.

This episode is an invitation to slow down, to savor, and to see:

• What has this summer meant for you so far?
• What might God be showing you through it?
• And how might reflection become not just a one-time practice, but a way of holding eternity—right here, in the ordinary?

Thank you for joining us for this three-part Sabbath Summer series. We’re grateful you chose to pause, reflect, and journey with us through anticipation, participation, and reflection.

Our hope is that these conversations have invited you into deeper rest—not just in your schedule, but in your spirit. May you carry what you’ve imagined, created, and savored into the days ahead, with openness to the delight and presence of God along the way.

Episode Transcript:

Rachael: Dan, hello, good to see you. We’ve been talking about Sabbath and summer and three movements that are really helpful to living well into Sabbath. So anticipation and preparation and then that movement into participation and play. And our final stop is around reflection and pondering. And even you’ve shared that this is actually a rythym, that you and Becky have daily, how you close your day. And I think for many of us, it’s one that we don’t even, we have so little practice in pausing to reflect and to ponder just as a normative practice, let alone thinking of that as a part of our process of Sabbath and play and rest because it kind of sounds like work. So would love to glean from some of your wisdom here and around the power and possibility that comes from intentioning reflection. And how do we reflect? Are there ways that we can reflect more meaningfully?

Dan: Well, like any habit, when you do practice it a lot, it isn’t that I feel like I do this well, it’s more I know how well I do it. Meaning, how better I could be doing is the dilemma of knowledge of if you know something and it pretty well, you know how little you know about it. And so what I would say is it is a daily practice. Again, there are nights where this doesn’t occur, but there’s a kind of ending process for Becky and I in terms of being able to reflect on what did this day hold for you? What did I remember our walk in some sense, how did it work out? And because I’m often part of that with her, I don’t have to ask for information. We need to talk it through. But for me, my ending of a day arises out of Romans 16:20-21, may the God of peace be with you soon. I just love that phrase. There’s almost a sense in which I can let go of some of the heartache of the day by just that, may the God of peace be with you soon, the God of shalom, soon. But then the next phrase is when he will crush evil under your feet, And then you go, oh, I need the, again, if we talk about the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, I need the sympathetic system to in one sense increase the intensity of cortisol, but I need the parasympathetic to allow rest. And that passage does that for me. It holds awe, it also holds, yes, I may not have done well today, but there is something that God has done and is using me in the middle of to do harm to evil, even if that’s the harm I know I bring to the world. So the ability to recollect, to re-collect, to remember is a form of ordering. And I think there has to be for anyone who wants to participate in Sabbath, a kind of what has it been for us to have gone through this experiment? We dreamt then we had disappointment, but we reconstructed and created something of a taste of goodness. How are we as we end this day? How are you and what is it about? Not so much how you would correct the day, but where can you prize the day? But also where can you begin that process to go, We are perhaps blessed with another day ahead. How will we enter into that day with the peace of God, but also the promise that we get to execute what we hate? And that is the one who has brought death and decay and division into this world.

Rachael: Yeah, I remember when we were researching Sabbath, just so much of the language, I think Heschel wrote a lot about this, but just that Sabbath is this practice of eternity. And in some ways, I think why recollecting and reflection is so hard for us. Sometimes when there’s enough goodness, it’s hard to bear. And when there’s enough, it increases our longing. It increases the disparity of what we’re meant for versus what is. And it strengthens our hope, which we’ve talked enough on this podcast that hope is not rose colored glasses or kind of a feigned optimism. So to take time to ponder what has been both the beautiful and the heartbreaking, I think is part of practicing eternity. And that sense of may the God of peace come, he will crush evil under your feet. Also reminds me of Psalm 23. That sense of creating a feast in the presence of enemies has a very similar kind of play.

Dan: Oh, oh, does it ever? Again, and part of that is, yeah, you’re going to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but almost in the next breath there’s a table set for you in the presence of your enemies. So the interplay of death and resurrection there, the interplay of loss, but also goodness. And I think I am prone perhaps many are to regret to like, oh, why didn’t I buy Amazon in 1994? Oh, Jesus. Alright, okay, I’m back. I’m back. And the worst part is I thought about it, I actually thought about it and then didn’t. So regret is easy to give your heart to versus grief and to be able to say regret is a form of anti-grief because you’re participating in some degree of self contempt. And so instead of just being able to go, yeah, I really do wish I had bought Amazon at a couple dollars per share, but I didn’t. And yet Becky and I made decisions early on in our marriage where we basically said, I don’t think we should be worrying about money at the level that we see some of our friends doing. And therefore I don’t think it’s really wise for me knowing who I am to get too involved in our so-called retirement plans. So we made a choice early on that I wouldn’t be reading thinking about the market. But Becky, we’d be so much happier if we had, you see, I mean I can slide into regret at the moment. I’m choosing to say I’m glad that we did not do that. So you almost have to have a kind of what we spoke about last time, a defiance to say no regret is a participation in the kingdom of evil. Because those who mourn blessed are they for will be comforted. So you choose as you reflect because there will inevitably be things you wish that you had done differently, chosen more wisely. Are you going to slide into regret or Yeah, there are things to be able to say, wow, how could I have been so foolish? Where was the blindness that enabled me to make these particular decisions that now I can look at and be able to underscore? That was a major, major flaw. So our heart to grieve opens, I think, the frame of understanding something of the peace of God with regard to any event, let alone our own engagement in it, to be able to say, no, no, no condemnation. Nope, nope, nope, no division reflecting the beginning of Romans 8 and the end of Romans 8. I think that’s the frame of being able to reflect, remember, recollect. Do you find yourself able with you and Michael to be able to do so without the lingering effects of regret?

Rachael: Yes. I think probably it’s one of the gifts of Michael for me is that that maybe becomes a little easier for him. We’re wired very differently. I’m maybe a little more rigid in what I hope for and long for. And there’s no contempt in that. Of course I am, I know my story. I understand how that came to be. But I think even yesterday we were pondering a need within our faith community to kind of pause on some plans and come together and to make space for grief. And he was like, I just think sometimes people need a space for their grief to be witnessed in order to move forward and change. And I was like, that’s so kind. I was not feeling that kind of kindness. It was kind of like get on board. I can lean more towards control. And where this has me thinking is just an extra dose of compassion for those of you who are the dreamers in your family or you’re the dreamers in your marriage relationship or you’re the dreamers in your friend group or your neighborhood. And because of that can easily bear more disappointment when things don’t go the way you most long for because you kind of know already that you are trying to dream something into existence and where you can turn in that kind of, yeah, like you said, why did I even think this would be a good idea? Or why did I try this again when it hasn’t gone well in the past? And I think there is a space to ponder what’s the wisdom in inviting certain people into dreams and yet my goodness, what a gift to be someone who dreams on behalf of others. But then I also think of how grateful I am when we remember to pause and ponder of how it opens the door to a different kind of gratitude, a different kind of holding onto goodness, which is its own kind of risk. Because any goodness we taste on this side of eternity, it’s like we have to hold onto it and savor it and also not try to recreate it in a rigid way. Not that we don’t get to keep it, but it does feel like in some ways in order to savor it, we have to release it or a let it grow. I say this often when we hope for something and then it actually comes into being, then it moves into the realm of faith because we actually tasted a kind of goodness we were longing for, which then increases our desire for more.

Dan: Oh, you’re talking about savoring? Oh my gosh. Oh, it’s such an important… I mean, yeah, we need to engage, reflect on what occurred and in one sense, to deal with the issue of potential disappointment or regret. But far more, you’re talking about the sweetest part of remembrance is savoring. I think at some occasions the event itself is actually a nuisance because what I want is I want the anticipation and dreaming and then I want the reflection and savoring the actual event itself is like I can’t do the other two without it.

Rachael: That’s right.

Dan: Becky and I just got back a few weeks ago from a trip to Dallas and we were invited to speak about marriage. And we’ve got a plan overall, an outline and things that, some stories. But at one point she was talking about my brokenness and my beauty and she goes, I’ve watched my husband give thousands of dollars to friends and people we don’t know. But over Easter, one of his grandchildren asked for some kombucha and it was like you were asking him for the last dollar he owns. Well, the audience went nuts. It was hilarious in part because she did it with such humor and playfulness, but also I think she was naming what I would hope would be true, not just of me, and that is contradiction, that we can be really, really good folks, deeply beautiful, but look a little further and the brokenness is there. So after the trip’s over as we’re beginning to hold it together and to talk about it, I’m like, what moment for you was in one sense the sweetest? And she said, mocking you about kombucha.

Rachael: Oh, Becky, I love her.

Dan: I’m like, yeah, I actually, I probably didn’t pick that as my top moment, but it was pretty close to the top of, it was hilarious. And it helped I think the audience, but it also helped me to go, it really is crazy. I mean in the past people, dear friends would ask if they could use my motorcycle. And I’m like, absolutely. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care about a motorcycle, I don’t care about a car. But fire upon you, if you think you’re going to get one of my books and you go, whoa, the motorcycle’s got a lot of thousands behind it, the book is like $20, $22. What’s the deal? So I mean some of the reflection that we’re meant to engage is not merely the event and how we engaged it, but also what’s being known, what’s being revealed about ourselves that in some sense surprise us. Perhaps it shouldn’t, but it does. I mean I really was gobsmacked when she said that part of felt a little humbled but far more like, yeah, that’s pretty weird money, not that important. Kombucha, don’t you mess with my stash.

Rachael: So what I hear you saying is there’s also an opportunity for understanding places where we are invited to deeper repentance so that we can become more human, more whole, more able to receive goodness and to be generous and participate in goodness. Is that what I hear you saying?

Dan: Bring it back to some spiritual reality? Yeah. Again, we can never escape the kindness of God and there would be such a different feel if Becky were really intending to humiliate, but she was inviting me, the audience to grapple with the essential contradictions that are existing in all of us, let alone the contradictions in the context of the well planned summer moment that you have. And if this is not about forming you more into the person, you’re meant to be more like Jesus, then good Lord, what are you doing? Well, what I’m doing is I am hoping for some fun moments this summer, but I better have, through remembrance, through that kind of pondering clarity of, oh, there’s something being invited. And I keep coming back in my mind to that notion of Revelation 3, Jesus standing at the door and knocking. And as we’ve said many other contexts, that’s not, shall we say, a passage about evangelism unless you think of evangelism as I’m putting it, and that is, it’s an invitation to your heart as a believer to know that Jesus has something for you in virtually every moment. Now, again, you don’t have to scour and what’s Jesus teaching me about this? What’s Jesus teaching? It’s more like chill out. Jesus is so sweet and kind to be real clear. You don’t have to search far. He will knock on the door. And the issue here is how open are you to the process of, in some sense coming more to be who you are meant to be through the events that you have intended and planned. To me that just creates this lovely interplay of the scene and the unseen. I’m going to do my best to create within the scene something of a taste of heaven. But I know there are bigger and more profound things. Jesus intends. Does that help as you think about your own reflection?

Rachael: It does. And it’s a good reminder for me right now in this particular season where I feel like I’m so much more aware of the places I’m failing at being a good human. I just think parenting a toddler and parenting teenagers just as a baseline will do that to you. Just bring into sharp focus. Do I know what I’m doing? And there’s so much good to celebrate. But there’s something about Intentioning play, delight, a deeper kind of presence with others living into our bodies with a kind of sensuality. I know we didn’t talk about that as much, but a part of Sabbath is sensuality. So being more present with our bodies that does have, it invites us to a deeper intimacy and knowledge of our own selves and of God. And I think sometimes in our lives it’s just so easy to see play and rhythms of rest as just vacations or just a pause from the mundane or an escape from kind of the tyranny of our reality and how different it is to imagine it as an inbreaking of the kingdom that has capacity to multiply how we love, how we receive love and how we give love. So yeah, it makes it more exciting for sure. And there’s a lot of mystery to it, right? Because so much of our summer will hold letting that reality break into the most mundane moments. And something about that actually feels kind of exciting to me.

Dan: Yeah, it does.

Rachael: So I’ll look forward to it.

Dan: And given that this is some of our last work for a period of time, I will just say one of the great, great sweet delights is the playground of doing these podcasts with you, my friend. And as much as I’m looking forward to a bit of play and a bit of rest and not showing up, I can truly say every time that we get to be on this together is a reminder. Even going back and thinking about the work of years ago, back in 2008 I think it was, of writing the Sabbath book with you and Philip. So all to say, I will miss you and I’m glad at one level not to see you, but I will look forward to when we get to come back and play again. And to say again, behind the scenes no one, no one sees our dear Andrew, who not only has to listen to us, but often has to sort of fix the sound of your chair or my coughing all to say for most people, this is not the end of the year, but for people like us who live more in the academic calendar, this is the end of the year and we’ve got some really, oh my gosh, fun, glorious people to talk with and some intriguing categories to engage as we come back in the fall. So merry, happy summer to you.

Rachael: You as well my friend.