Remember the Sabbath

After he created the world, God rested for a bit. Jesus made time for rest; his ministry was draining, and he needed time to pray and commune with the Father to regain his strength. Observing the Sabbath is a commandment, the fourth one, I think. In Jesus' time, there were certain Jews who made observing it onerous - one really couldn't do much of anything that could possibly be construed as work without being punished by the authorities.

Now it seems we have little or no Sabbath at all. The Protestant work ethic takes over; we work our fingers to the bone for God, our loved ones, and our fellow humans and wonder why we are so dang tired.

I definitely struggle with this problem. A whole day off? How could I possibly manage that? Yeah, from work, but what about my chores and other commitments? And what does it mean anyway? "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work..." (Exodus 20: 8-10) Seems clear enough. But how is work defined? What if I love my job? Or what if everything seems like work? Or are we supposed to be in church all day? After a couple of weeks of that, I would definitely not look forward to the next Sabbath. Don't get me wrong - I enjoy attending church and find it revitalizing. But only for an hour or two.

Perhaps I hit the nail on the head in that last line. Worship, prayer, meditation, rest, recreation - all revitalizing activities that are appropriate for the Sabbath. Things that get me away from the constant chatter in my mind about what's next; that constant push.

I've long believed, even when I wasn't a practicing Christian, that if I have my priorities straight and follow through with them to the best of my ability, then everything else will fall into place, at least as much as it can in this lfe. Actually putting that belief into practice has happened seldom in my life. It takes faith, patience, and sometimes courage to make the Sabbath time a priority.

Maybe it's not a whole day per week. (But Jews who had much harder lives than us did it, so why can't we?) Maybe it's a few hours on a Sunday or Saturday afternoon, and then every few weeks make it up with several days. Whatever. God gave us this commandment for very good reasons. We need time off regularly. Whatever becomes work needs to be put down for a time while we rest our minds and bodies.

Yesterday I attended a talk by Mark Miller of Chick-fil-A, a company that closes its offices and all its restaurants on each and every Sunday. And they're opening 75 new restaurants a month, so they're doing very well. My cynical thought when he told us this was, "OK, but what are the other six days like? Are you going nuts all the time catching up?" Now I'm thinking if that were the case, they would have softened that practice. But they haven't. It works for them.

I want to try and make observing the Sabbath work for me.