It's Not Just a Good Idea, It's the Law
John Edgerton
September 14, 2021
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
~Exodus 20
The command to rest is serious business. It is right there in the decalogue (AKA the Ten Commandments) next to such notable items as “do not murder.” Throughout the Law and the prophets, God is so often decrying an ethic on non-stop work, of productivity raised onto a dais and presented as the source of all blessing.
If I had to describe the overall spiritual state of today in a word, that word would be “tired.” We’ve spent a year and a half holding on, holding tight, struggling and working. And it has taken its toll. Colliding head on with one another are two clear realities—the enervating and dispiriting length of the pandemic on the one hand, and our country’s cultural assumption that hard work is the solution to all ills on the other.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Don’t take my word for it, though. Take it from the Ten Commandments. Working all the time without a rest is impossible. Not even God could achieve that. And in God’s wisdom, God did not even try.
In this season, I encourage you to find ways to live into sabbath. Allow some things to go undone. Allow some deadlines to slip out a month, two months, until the new year. Take sabbath. After all, taking sabbath is not just a good idea, it’s the Law.
Prayer: God of the Sabbath, bless us in our rest.
