sunday

Lots of you know I am a big advocate for keeping the Sabbath. I am always amazed at how many Christians don't think much of it. It seems to me to be the best of all the commands. Pretty much God is saying "STOP WORKING AND HAVE A DAY OFF FOR GOODNESS SAKE." Like, who would say, "oh no thanks" to that? It seems bizarre that God even had to command it. (Bizarre to me perhaps, though maybe not to the Hebrews who were freed from the 24/7 pyramid-making business). 

But clearly there is more to it than that. It's not just a day when you don't go into work. It's a day that you set aside for God. (Everyday should be that way, but God knows we gotta start somewhere.) It's a day that is devoted to Him. It is time for us to go into the Lord's chambers and recieve the real, soul-deep rest that can only be found with Him. The Bible talks about death with words like "rest" and "sleep" (e.g. John 11:13). It also says that when we are absent of our bodies, i.e. dead, then we are present with the Lord. I'm not saying go die so you can get a good nights sleep (sheesh). I'm saying that we are not gonna know what true rest means until we are fully with Him. But I think the Sabbath is a way, a day once a week for us to get a little bit of this kind of rest.

 For me that often that means lazy afternoons at the river, a bit of Brooke and Iver, a bit of snappity snap on the compact. It also means family, it means not shopping, it means holding off on the errands and the study and the to-do lists. It means a little less Facey and a lot more NIVy. Although, in all honesty, my Sundays do not always look like this. Sometimes I don't give a flip. Sometimes my week has been chock-full of laze that I don't need a minute more. Sometimes I forget that it's Sunday altogether. But on the whole, if I've got the kind of God who commands things like "you must regularly chill", then I'm the kind of person who must regularly chill.