Our Sabbath Day

Of all the Ten Commandments, God committed the most words to the 5th. In the KJV, it reads like this: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

Imagine chiseling all of that into a stone tablet. He could’ve just said “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” and left it at that. He did so few words for some of the other commandments…. Did He think there might be some confusion as to how “keeping the Sabbath holy” should be interpreted?

Well, He was right, of course. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to how it should be interpreted, especially in our US culture today; or, should I say, it is a commandment that is regularly not remembered nor honored by choice. It’s a choice for parents to allow their children to take to the soccer field at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, who do their “WalMart-ing” and grocery shopping every Sunday, who seem to think that Sunday is the day to catch up on paperwork. And, to the chagrin of all those craft-oriented people in the world, Hobby Lobby is closed on Sunday. The nerve!

God includes in His commandment the fact that He followed it too, when creating the world. If God can rest one day of the week, and actually needs it, then don’t we?

Pastors may have to make their Sabbath, or day of rest, a different day than Sunday. Nurses and doctors may have to work on Sunday, but each has to choose another day of that week to rest: rest their body, and their soul. “Thou shalt not do any work.” In years past, this would even include not saddling up the horse, or not cooking (I’m fine with the latter ;) It might include not mowing the grass on Sunday, (or one’s chosen Sabbath, if necessary). But, instead of focusing on what we shouldn’t do on this day of rest; let’s focus on what we should and can do.

Rest. Worship. Pray. Plan a picnic of food prepared on Saturday and enjoy nature with the family; nature that God created. When do any of us just take time to listen to the birds sing, the frogs croak, feast our eyes on the colors of the sky and field? God created our bodies and our souls to need rest, worship, prayer, and all the benefits of the natural world He created, yet we ignore it regularly and we wonder why we feel so stressed all the time? Or, some of us have felt so stressed for so long that we don’t even realize we feel stressed and consider it normal to feel tense, to not sleep well, and be exhausted by Friday evening and stare at the television until we fall asleep to it.

“But the kids will feel left out. I don’t have time on the other days. My boss expects me to get these done and doesn’t care when it happens. I’ll lose this event and won’t get that gold medal.”

Yes, I’m talking about Olympian Eric Liddel. His best Olympic event was run on a Sunday, so he chose to train for the 400 m instead, an event that was definitely not his best. An American masseur slipped a piece of paper into Liddell's hand as he ran the 400m with a quotation from 1 Samuel 2:30, "Those who honor me I will honor." And he set a record. Does anyone remember the name of the winner in the 100 m, his best event, the one he chose not to run? Does anyone remember the names of the other runners of the 400 m?

God did honor him. And He will honor each of us if we choose to make it a priority to treat the Sabbath as holy, a gift from God, to be used for rest, not to catch up on work, not to shout from the sidelines of a playing field. Try it and see.

Blessings to all,

Brenda Schultz (wife of Patrick)