Thursday, August 16, 2007

Sabbath

The concept of "sabbath" is all over the Bible. It begins with God taking "sabbath" on the 7th day of creation and goes all the way to Jesus teaching about it in the New Testament. Sabbath is basically "rest." But not just rest for no reason. Rest "on purpose." Intentional rest for the purpose of renewal, rejuvanation, etc. Here's a confession - I stink at sabbath. I've learned that about myself over the years. So I've really begun to work on it. Isn't that funny? I'm WORKING on RESTING. Seems kind of backwards/ironic. But if you're like me you have to work on things like sabbath. I'm trying to have a small bit of sabbath every day now. And I'm also trying to take bigger chunks of it at times. In a couple weeks my wife and I are headed out of town for 5 days - no kids, just me and her - for the sole purpose of sabbath. When I get back I know that I'll be ready to go at it again - with the church, kids, and life in general!

3 comments:

joy said...

I was thinking about “sabbath” after reading your blog. I searched for passages about the Sabbath, and came across Isaiah 58:13.
“You must obey God’s law about the Sabbath and not do what pleases you on that holy day. You should call the Sabbath a joyful day and honor it as the Lord’s holy day.
You should honor it by not doing whatever you please nor saying whatever you please on that day.”

Now that alone I think is a great verse, -‘call it a joyful day’- but when I looked further I found the whole chapter to be awesome. Only 14 verses, but they epitomize how I believe Christ lived and wants us to live. I like looking at different translations to broaden my view, and here I like the Contemporary English Version, and The Message.

joy said...

I was thinking about “sabbath” after reading your blog. I searched for passages about the Sabbath, and came across Isaiah 58:13.
“You must obey God’s law about the Sabbath and not do what pleases you on that holy day. You should call the Sabbath a joyful day and honor it as the Lord’s holy day.
You should honor it by not doing whatever you please nor saying whatever you please on that day.”

Now that alone I think is a great verse, -‘call it a joyful day’- but when I looked further I found the whole chapter to be awesome. Only 14 verses, but they epitomize how I believe Christ lived and wants us to live. I like looking at different translations to broaden my view, and here I like the Contemporary English Version, and The Message

Anonymous said...

John,
Tommy Willingham gave me your name to contact about church planting stuff, which I will. Was checking your site and saw this on sabbath. I'm not sure if you can get it off their archives, but I wrote an article for Disc. Journal in Jan/Feb 2002 on Sabbath that may be of interest. If you can't get it, let me know and I'll mail it to you.
I'll call you in the next week to chat with you.