The concept of sabbath has taken a real beating in religious circles over the last 100+ years. A day of rest used to be virtually dictated by law and by social norms -- stores were closed, few jobs required work on Sunday, and some Christians even followed the practice of doing no work (not even cooking) on Sunday. Times have changed. Virtually everything is open on Sunday, which requires many people to work and gives all of us the opportunity to run our errands and work on our to-do list.
The increasing hectic pace of our lives does not eliminate the need for rest -- even though it may limit our opportunities to rest. If we cannot commit to a day each week where we do no work, can we still find times of rest, moments of sabbath, in our busy lives? What does sabbath look like? How can we follow Jesus' example to take time away from our responsibilities?
2 comments:
Oh, Lord preserve me, I think I’m about to say something serious. [The “Lord preserve me” is said in the spirit of Maureen O’Hara’s father/uncle/whoever in that fabulous yet quirky John Wayne extravaganza, The Quiet Man.]
I wonder at the whole concept of “time away from our responsibilities.” One of the great teaching parables of modern times is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The first climax (actually disguised and not seen as such until darn near the end) is the tirade of Marley’s Ghost, saying, “Business?! Mankind was my business!” Is God a Spare Time Activity? An add-on like the ticky-tacky crap that people stick on their automobiles? (The latest little fad of hanging plastic replicas of genitalia on one’s trailer hitch has exceeded even my low standards of taste.) I fear that until God makes it onto our “Must Be Done” list (hmmmm - too passive, how about “until each of us consciously puts Him there”), we will fail to include him in our daily lives and live in some erratic butt-on-fence existence that is hard to balance and makes one's butt sore. Mostly that’s self-criticism, for all I know, I’m a minority of one in this strangely loving place.
I still think you people need better immigration controls, what with letting me in the door and all.
In Dickensian heresy,
Allah ahkbar,
R
Roger,
I agree with you. All I would say is that Sabbath was never intended to be the only time one thought about God -- though I'm sure that some hyper-scheduled people may only think about God during their carefully scheduled down-time.
Even people who think about God frequently can benefit from sabbath time.
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