Human Race

The alarm clock goes off way too early. At least, that’s how it feels. But a long day awaits you. First, you need to drop the kids off at school. Then there’s a breakfast meeting to attend, followed by a whole series of urgent matters to deal with.

That’s a typical day for a lot of people. As someone once said, “That’s why we’re called the human race.”

Rest is one thing we crave but something we’re so poor at doing well. In the Old Testament, the Sabbath was often desecrated. And in the New Testament, it was grossly misunderstood.

In Isaiah 56, Sabbath is mentioned three times (Isaiah 56:2,4,6). We learn that keeping the Sabbath wasn’t for devout Jews only, but for anyone who desired to walk with God.

One Bible teacher explains, “Sabbath is the time set aside to do nothing so that we can receive everything, to set aside our anxious attempts to make ourselves useful, to set aside our tense restlessness, to set aside our media-saturated boredom. Sabbath is the time to receive silence and let it deepen into gratitude, to receive quiet into which forgotten faces and voices unobtrusively make themselves present, to receive the days of the just completed week and absorb the wonder and miracle still reverberating from each one, to receive our Lord’s amazing grace.”

By establishing a Sabbath time, we learn that by subtracting certain distractions from our schedules, we can add meaning to our lives. By subtracting, we actually gain. By emptying our schedule, God can fill us anew.

In Exodus 16:29, we’re told, “The Sabbath is the Lord’s gift to you.” A Sabbath time isn’t simply a discipline to inculcate; it’s a gift to be enjoyed.

Taken from “Our Daily Journey”