“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 manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 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. …
“Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed.”
Character Check What one change in my lifestyle could increase my delight in God?
In Business Terms Work must be regularly balanced with plenty of play. This isn’t easy. Work-especially when it’s satisfying-dons the regal robes of Importance and tyrannizes everything else. Play seems too small a thing to approach the throne with a request for time.
Perhaps this is why God commanded at least one day of play out of seven. It takes the hard edge of a commandment to cut back the ever-expanding encroachments of work. A divine suggestion wouldn’t have stood a chance.
The Bible calls for a Sabbath rest, not a Sabbath play. But what is rest? I don’t think it comes from doing nothing. I suggest we think of Sabbath rest as a time of God-ordained play. Play has two elements-freedom and delight. We play when, freed from the necessity of work, we do something for the sheer joy of it.
The center of Christian play is worship. What is praise but delight in God? Having been set free by grace, we enjoy the presence of God, playing as children with a Father in a holy game of love. With worship at the heart of play and play at the heart of worship, all play is lifted in importance. We may not demean this gift. To build a model train layout, to fly a glider or scuba dive-to do these things for no other reason than pure delight-is to do something holy, something that witnesses to the Sabbath rest we have in Christ.
—Donald McCullough
Something to Think About Silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go. – Anonymous grade school girl
