Exodus 20:8-11

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Once a month, I get together with a few friends where we talk about, and spend time with each other as well as spend time with God. Each month, we rotate who will decide what we will do together. Sometimes it’s sharing a meal, sometimes it’s prayer, sometimes it’s just talking about our lives. I have to say that I really appreciate our time together; sometimes, however, I admit that it can be hard for me to get to that time. And last week was one of those times.

It was my turn to take the lead, and while I knew that it was my turn for over a month, when it came to the two weeks prior to our time together, I still didn’t have a clear idea of what to focus on. My time was spent prepping for Easter and when Easter Sunday had passed, I was swamped with work. I had multiple presentations that required my attention that week. Once I got my work done, I spent a whole day in prayer asking God for direction for our upcoming gathering. Even after the day in prayer, I didn’t feel like I knew what I was going to do. With that, I became stressed and felt pressured to ‘come up with something’ because time was running out.

I allowed myself to get so stressed, that before too long, I was seriously considering backing out of the monthly gathering all together. I mean, I didn’t have time for this. I had too much on my plate. I just needed time, I didn’t need the stress. It was in the midst of that panic moment, that I realized what I should’ve known all along…I needed to talk about the sabbath.

Sometimes, I don’t get why I’m so thick-headed. I mean, I’d been contemplating these verses in Exodus for weeks. Why did I allow my daily routine to cloud my thoughts and overwhelm my time?

8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. When I went back to this verse in Exodus, it brought me back to a quiet spot with God. The Sabbath day is not just a day to not do anything, it’s a day set aside with God. While I had spent a day praying for God’s direction, admittedly, the prayer was focused on my needs…God helping me. It wasn’t focused on contemplating and celebrating the awesome nature of our God. I needed to remember that I just needed to be still and quiet so that I could just be with God.

9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. These verses reminded me that our sabbath with God should be a whole day; not just an hour or two, a whole day. It’s not a day to get tasks done. It’s a day for God…a break from the tasks that have a tendency of cluttering up our weeks. Having said that, though, in the New Testament, Jesus warns us about taking this commandment to the extreme.

In Mark 2:27-28, “Jesus said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. “So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.‘” In fact, in Mark, (vs 2:23-3:6) Jesus was challenged by the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees, on what could or couldn’t be done on the Sabbath. The religious leaders didn’t like that the disciples gathered grain to eat on the Sabbath and the Bible goes so far to say that they began conspiring against Jesus when Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. What they failed to realize, though, was that God gave the Israelites the gift of the sabbath and it’s an opportunity for us to give it back to God, not simply as a strict observance of the law. It seems like the Pharisees lost sight of the intent of the law. And as the Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus knew this. To do good on the Sabbath was, and is, good especially when the intent is to reflect the character of God. My understanding is that the Sabbath is about being God focused, rather than task focused.

11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. For me, this verse resonates with such profound beauty. The Sabbath is a gift from God that goes back to the beginning…back to creation. In the book, Interpretation: Exodus, Terence Fretheim writes that the sabbath is

a religious act with cosmic implications…The divine rest in creation is not a picturesque way of speaking of the end of God’s creating; rather, the divine rest “finished” creation. God’s resting is a divine act that builds into the very created order of things a working/resting rhythm. Only when that rhythm is honored by all is the creation what God intended it to be. The sabbath is thus a divinely given means for all creatures to be in tune with the created order of things. Even more, sabbath-keeping is an act of creation-keeping. To keep the sabbath is to participate in God’s intention for the rhythm of creation. Not keeping the sabbath is a violation of the created order…

I love Fretheim’s observation of this verse. It reminded me of the why behind the sabbath. I was also reminded that the gift in the sabbath is that God has given it to us as part of creation and our own life cycle…God set aside this time for our well being because the best thing for us is resting with God.

There was a lot of text allotted  to ensure that the context of the sabbath was understood.  It begins and ends with the sabbath as holy. Keeping a sabbath day–all 24 hours of it–set aside to rest with God is an essential part of living out our faith. God blessed the sabbath, it’s our gift back to God to keep it holy.

When I got caught up with work and all of the tasks that were before me, I found relief only when I remembered the sabbath. Just like physiologically, we can not live without the recuperation that comes with sleep…we can not live a spiritual life that is without the sabbath. We need the sabbath to live in the spirit; it’s the time spent with God that restores our spirit.