The weekly Sabbath day begins at sundown on Friday night and ends at sundown on Saturday night. Various holy days listed in the Law of Moses also call for the observance of a time of Sabbath rest. It is during this period of time that God calls us to shift our focus from the mundane tasks of our lives and focus instead on worshipping Him. Even as I write these words, I know that they do not always ring true for me in the way that I conduct my day-to-day life.
The world around us tends to view calendars filled with appointments and long to-do lists as signs of productivity. In many ways, the last two years of pandemic changes have made this particular view even more pronounced. Human life has been created in such a way that we need the rhythms of time to rest our bodies, decompress our minds, and recharge our souls. God offered the Israelites these places of rest in both the weekly cycle of Sabbath and within other times of festival, special times when He told His people that they needed to rest.
Many of us are challenged today with the idea of the Sabbath because its concept does not translate well into modern culture. Rest is not simply about not working. It is about placing our intentional focus upon God and worshipping Him, whether corporately or individually, and making this particular time to be one free of distraction (which tends to be my downfall). The simple truth is that we need not become conformed to a legalistic understanding of Sabbath as seen throughout the laws. Instead, we should always hold in our minds those words of Jesus, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” as we strive to live into God’s call for rest.