Exodus 20:8-11 Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have 6 days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a sabbath day if rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes your sons and daughters, your male and female servants. Your livestock and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.
My Thoughts
As I was reading this today I could not help but think about how often we are tired and feel like we are spinning our wheels. I am not talking about those who have to work on Sundays..I am more talking about a culture that we as people have created, a culture of busy, busy, busy getting all that we can have as fast as we can get it. We have become exhausted, disconnected from each other and from God. When God sent Manna to the Israelites he sent enough on the sixth day for the seventh day so no one worked. .... Are we never to do anything on Sunday, of course not, Jesus taught us that. On Sunday we are to love others, honor God by acting in love. Some people have to honor God by loving their families and going to work. But Jesus also taught us that we were still to keep God's commandments,but in love.... But not like the Pharisees that used the law to create impossibilities.
What would happen to our world, our lives our time and energy if we did our best to honor God like He ask us to here in these verses? What if we spent a whole day each week just thinking on God, talking about God, resting in God? I know that tithing our money has protected it, made it stretch farther, God has honored that with pressing it down and overflowing it, just like a He promised Malachi 3:10. It is the same money... It just works out by the grace of God. God can do that with my time too.
My church is reading a book about giving God a tenth of our time each day...which comes out to be 144 minutes a day.... Or 1008 minutes a week. If we spend 12 waking hours a day and on Sundays gave that to God by focusing on Him, resting in Him, catching up on Bible reading, talking with family about Him...all day long that is 720 minutes or our 1008 minutes a week.... Say we even took a two hour afternoon nap...that leaves 600 minutes spent on God, resting in Him...thinking only of Him. That leaves 408 minutes to spread out over 6 days..which would be 68 minutes a day to renew our minds daily and we will have tithed ten precent if our time to God each week. Oh at the possibilities.
In the verses above God tells us not to work, He also tells us not to be responsible for others working...today most Ipod us don't have servants in our homes...but we do have people out in the world that serve us... We should, from these verses, be aware of being a part of making them work in Sundays. We should be aware of how we spend our Sundays.
Over the last few months Robby and I have not shopped or ate out on Sundays.... A couple of times we things have come up....like Robby fixing John-Roberts headlight for him before he left, an act of love. But we have not spent the day really meditating on God. The idea makes me excited...to think how it could effect my life, our life. I do know that only good could come from this, everything we do that God ask us to do produces such good fruit. Today I am going to really think in this commandment.
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