From the Pulpit: ‘Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy’
Friends in the Community,
Greetings to each and every one of you from God our loving heavenly Father and our living Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I hope and pray that this article finds all of you well now that we are in our final week of May and heading into the Memorial Day weekend.
As we move toward what seems to be the unofficial beginning of summer, I want us to think about the Third Commandment. For many of us the Third Commandment is, “Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy.” As we learned this Commandment as children (and adults), we learned about the importance of keeping a time during the week for worship. Our sabbath was seen as the time when we participated in activities in our families of faith.
This is one way for us to keep this Commandment. It is important for us to nurture our faith in the company of other Christians. We are invited to attend worship and other programs in our congregations. When we do so, our faith is nurtured. We feel closer to God, and we are also able to build relationships with the people God has placed in our lives. There are times when what we receive in worship is able to strengthen us to get through the rest of our week.
We also need to think about sabbath in another way. When God invites us to set aside a day to come together for worship, God is also inviting us to set aside time to rest. Many of us spend much of our lives moving from one activity to the next. We tend to fill our calendars and schedules with as many things as we possibly can. As I have said before, it has been shown that the word “busy” has become a popular term in our culture. We think if we are busy, then we must be important. I read an article once that said, “Every time you want to say the word, ‘busy,’ use the word important instead.” For many us, this can be a humbling experience. Most of us would never say (out loud) we are more important than other people, but we have very little problem with saying we are busier than other people.
Since we like being busy, we forget to take the time to nurture our bodies, our minds and our spirits. Our bodies were not meant to run hard 24 hours a day seven days a week. We need rest because resting enables us to recuperate. When we take just a few moments to relax, we are able to get through the rest of the activities on our calendars.
When we do not take the time for sabbath rest, we can feel the effects physically, emotionally and spiritually. Our bodies get tired. We feel the effects of burnout. We do not feel like we have enough energy to take part in the activities that are taking place in our communities or our families of faith.
Some of us will feel guilty about stopping for a few moments and resting. We will feel like we are letting other people or ourselves down. We will want to fill the few seconds we have allowed for rest with more stuff to do.
If we find ourselves with these feelings, we are encouraged to turn to the first book of the Bible. When God created the world, he took time to rest. We are told that on the seventh day, God took the time to just relax and enjoy the creation he had brought about when he made the world. There were other things God could be doing, but he stopped and allowed himself to just sit back and relax.
It is time for us to give ourselves moments when we can just sit back and relax. As we do so, we can just enjoy what God has given to us. When the time comes to do something again, we can do it with new energy and vigor because our bodies, our minds and our souls will be renewed.
Just a thought …
