Sabbathing
5 September 2020
During COVID, my employer has continued to be operational. Due to the nature of the business (manufacturing of civilian and military aerospace, along with medical), being an “essential business” meant that things continued as usual.
Other than “essential” businesses, most people have stayed in their homes. Even one of the worst commutes in the country (here in the Puget Sound) has been almost reasonable (until recently) as people just weren’t commuting.
Staying at home meant so little was occurring. Human activity was cut in half. What has been amazing is how quickly nature recognized it. For example, multiple times at my employer, we have seen a coyote wandering around in the middle of the day. This is down the hill from the Everett Boeing complex.
Nature has taken notice and advantage of humanity’s absence. It is not just in the Puget Sound. It is many places. Humanity inside and nature was free to run.
The land has received somewhat of a Sabbath. It is resting from the frenetic pace of humanity.
For a brief moment, humanity also took a brief break. Now, however, the frenetic pace has found a few more notches to go up. Public people are now brazenly acting as bad as the “trolls” (internet term for people looking to cause trouble and pain) that used to be condemned. Online bullying is now encouraged so that people think and espouse the “correct” things.
Humanity needs a Sabbath.
There were arguments within the church about what day the Sabbath is. This denies the Lord of the Sabbath. Blue Laws (laws that closed almost all businesses on Sundays) were a legalistic attempt to enforce a Sabbath, but they could never fulfill the spiritual aspect of it.
This was Paul‘s point to the Romans. Already there were arguments over which day was correct to worship God (besides all of them). Part of this may be attributable to the days of the week being named after Roman gods. Just a conjecture.
Paul’s and Jesus‘ point was that the Sabbath was an act of worship, not a day of the week. Even today, that is still a discussion for many that don’t differentiate between cultural norms and spiritual needs.
※ Prayer ※
Lord Jesus, help us to keep our Sabbath focus on you and to live out the Sabbath peace in our lives. Amen.
※ Questions ※
1) What does Sabbath mean to you? How do you live out a Sabbath?
2) How can you live out a Sabbath that will draw others to live out a Sabbath, too?