“The Gift of Sabbath” by Pastor Nate

My children have a book that refers to the Ten Commandments as God’s Ten Best Ways.  I really like that wording, because I do believe that God created us to live in a certain way.  God didn’t just make us and then say “figure it out”, no God had some specific thoughts about the best ways for us to live.

And there’s one of those commandments that we often overlook, one of those commandments that really could, for so many people, invite us into a better way to live.

One of the Ten Best Ways simply says “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it Holy”.  Six days you shall Labor, God says, and on the 7th day, you shall not do any work!  For six days you can rush around and fill your to-do list and jump from one meeting to the next.  You can work yourself ragged for six days of the week but on the 7th day, you’ve got to stop and remember.

Remember that each day is a gift from God, not a to-do list to get through.  Remember that your value does not come from what you do.  Remember that your worth isn’t defined by what you accomplish, your worth is always and only defined by God.

Overwork is a real probably in our country today.  We are killing ourselves with the ways that we overwork, and then we can become bitter or resentful because we think that working 24/7 will make us happy but instead it’s just destroying our health and destroying our soul and all that work is drowning out God’s message of love for us.

We the gift of the Sabbath.  We a reminder at least once every 7 days that God’s plan was for us to work AND rest.  We need to take a day to just rest in the goodness of God so that we can remember the joy of freedom, the joy of truly living, and the joy of God’s freely given, unending love.