“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
Exodus 20:8–11 (NIV)
Keeping the Sabbath is one of those spiritual disciplines that for years seemed antiquated, elusive, and somewhat misogynistic to me. My first impressions were formed by a little story in a children’s biography of the missionary Lottie Moon, a Southern Baptist missionary to China in the early 1900s. The story I remember most vividly is of Lottie breaking her family’s strict no-work-on-Sunday Sabbath rule. This rule prohibited any cooking, the result being only cold sandwiches or leftovers from the larder could be served. Lottie, thinking the rule was old-fashioned and silly, feigned illness and stayed behind from church one Sunday in order to prepare a large, hot, delicious meal for her family. Of course Lottie’s choice landed her in a lot of trouble, but I thought it was magnificent. After all, what did God care if one cooked on Sunday or not? Wouldn’t God be more in favor of you serving your family joyfully rather than being miserly and falsely pious? Jesus healed the sick on the Sabbath. Why were religious people always trying to make extra rules?
For a while, this is how I thought of the tradition of keeping a Sabbath: falsely pious, rigid, rooted in legalism, and not of any interest to Christ. That is, until I had kids. Years and years later, a mother myself, getting up to make another round of breakfast and lunch and bottles and pots of coffee, it occurred to me that perhaps Lottie’s mother enjoyed having the day off from slaving over a hot stove! I began to see there was some wisdom in the idea of a Sabbath. I needed a new way to think about it and approach it—a way beyond Lottie Moon and grumpy old men with their grumpy old rules.
Reflect:
Read Exodus 20:8–11. What associations do you have with the idea of keeping the Sabbath? Who comes to mind? Or what practices or rules do you think of? Are your associations with Sabbath-keeping positive or negative?
Pray:
As you begin this week of exploring the Sabbath, invite God to challenge your preconceived notions and to guide you in ways you can respond to his Word.
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