Sabbath
25 Feb 2010 2 Comments
in Church leadership, faith, Study & Epiphany Tags: faith, God, Jesus, Sabbath
Recently, my pastor spoke to our staff about the importance of observing the sabbath. Granted, we all work for a church so the term sabbath takes on a slightly different meaning since most of us are engaged in some kind of ministry work on Sundays. So, the key becomes marking another day of the week as our own personal sabbath. He asked us a simple question, “Do you have one day, every week, when you do no work and rejuvenate yourselves with God?”
Sabbath: Pronunciation: \ˈsa-bəth\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English sabat, from Anglo-French & Old English, from Latin sabbatum, from Greek sabbaton, from Hebrew shabbāth, literally, rest
1 a : the seventh day of the week observed from Friday evening to Saturday evening as a day of rest and worship by Jews and some Christians b : Sunday observed among Christians as a day of rest and worship
2 : a time of rest
Exodus 20:8 – Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
This is one of God’s top 10, therefore not merely a suggestion; not holding a sabbath is sin…. yet most of us would probably admit that our memories become very short when it comes to remembering the sabbath. I struggle with this. When I finally get a day off from work, I’m often flooded with all of the other things that I need to do just to maintain my home life. I rarely get more than a few hours to really rest, let alone an entire day.
Call this post part confession and part open-for-suggestion; What can we all do to honor this sabbath mandate?
Feb 25, 2010 @ 14:14:02
Definately a thought provoking post!
I think many of us are in a similar position – when we do get those few precious hours away from work, a whole host of demands decends upon us. Don’t underestimate those acts of corporate worship, even if we are leading them. Having at least one day where God, and His people, are our primary concern is certainly honouring God and the Sabbath, I think. Okay, we also need ‘alone’ time with the Lord, for our direction, rejuvenation, and personal honouring of our Saviour, is vitally important. Perhaps we have to schedule time to do this into our personal and family calendars? I think i’m going to be scratching my head over this one for a while!