Reflections on God's Gift of the Sabbath

Lent Day 12: Tuesday March 2

Theme for the Week: God’s Gift of the Ten Commandments

Passage for the Day:

Deuteronomy 5:12-15

¹²Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. ¹³ Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁴ But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. ¹⁵ Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

Reflection: In our hurried, rushed, more-to-do-than-time-to-do-it pace of life, keeping sabbath doesn’t seem to be a priority. It often seems that we are too busy to dedicate the time to rest, reflect, worship, pray or allow for renewal. In the Deuteronomy version of the Ten Commandments, the command to observe the sabbath is followed by an explanation of the need to rest, and by a reminder of the Israelites’ time of slavery in Egypt, with its implication of physical exhaustion. God is commanding a sabbath time because God knows that the human body was not designed to function without rest.

Have you ever had the experience of pushing yourself beyond tiredness, only to find that it seemed to take twice as long to do the work, or to find out that what you did was faulty? Have you ever had the experience of mishandling some human interaction when you were tired? Have you ever felt your stress level rise when you push yourself to accomplish more than there is time for? God wants you to take time to be whole and healthy.

What does keeping the sabbath holy look like to you? On a holy sabbath there is time spent in God’s presence. In the presence of the Holy One and in the community of fellow believers, you are given the opportunity to stop running for a few moments, to rest, to reflect on your life and to pray about things that are concerning you.

What if your job demands that you work on Sunday? It is possible to choose a different day as your sabbath. On that day, can you set aside time to be in God’s presence through practicing individual devotions? Is there perhaps a church in your area that offers worship at a different time? Find some way to preserve sabbath time—give yourself permission to rest, unwind and be in God’s presence.

Prayer Themes: Pray that you might be able to recognize and appreciate God’s gift of sabbath time. Pray that you would be able to give yourself the gift of time to rest, renew and be in God’s presence. Thank God for sabbath time.