Daily Lesson for March 17, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Jeremiah chapter 17 verses 21 and 22:

 21 Thus says the Lord: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. 22 And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers.

Honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.

When we think of Sabbath keeping many of immediately think of Saturday-night baths, Sunday blue laws, and the quintessential Sabbath keepers -- the Puritans, whom H.L. Mencken once defined as those people with "the haunting fear that somebody, somewhere may be happy."  In other words, we think of Legalism and we've all about had it with Legalism. 

Yet, I have the haunting fear that in leaving the Legalism of Sabbath behind, we've also lost something very crucial to our humanity -- namely, holy rest. We threw that baby was thrown out with Saturday night's bath water.

God gave us the Sabbath as a reminder that there is more to life than work.  While bringing home the bread is necessary, man cannot live on bread alone.  Humanity was made for more than work; we were made for worship, family, friendship, play, and prayer also. In fact, Eugene Peterson says that is what Sabbath is for -- to pray and play.  God gave us the Sabbath so that we as individuals and families might enjoy this sacred time of rest and recreation, and so that we as a community might assure that all other individuals and families can share in it too. To never take time off is to be a workaholic; to not be able to take time off is to be a slave. Neither of them honors God with her work. 

There is an old story about some Westerners who were exploring the inner contours of Africa and in doing so hired a group of natives to serve as their porters. The explorers drove the group hard for several days without rest, until finally the natives sat down and refused to go on.  When asked why they would not get up one of the natives replied, "We have to allow time for our souls to catch up with our bodies."

Sabbath is the time God gave us to let our souls catch up with our bodies; and it is absolutely necessary in this hard-driving world. 

Don't worry, honoring the Sabbath and keeping it holy is not going to all of a sudden turn us all into Puritans; but week in and week out it may very well keep us alive -- in our heart, our mind, our body, and our soul.