Thinking about time and order has lead me to writing about the Sabbath.

Sabbath is a Hebrew word for “cease.” It means to stop working. Observing the Sabbath is one of God’s commandments: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8). This has been a problem to interpret for Christians. The Jewish Sabbath was from sundown Friday through sundown Saturday. What were Christians, particularly Gentile Christians, to do about the Sabbath? Saturday was a workday. You couldn’t just stop working to observe the Sabbath. And then Christians began to worship on Sundays. Was that the Sabbath? Was going to worship an observance of the Sabbath?

This is an issue that’s never been settled. Martin Luther explained the Sabbath this way in the Small Catechism: “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.”

I don’t disagree with Luther’s interpretation, but I have been struck by something Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his book Sabbath:  “What is the Sabbath? Spirit in the form of time. With our
bodies we belong to space; our spirit, our souls, soar to eternity, aspire to the holy. The Sabbath is an ascent to the summit.” That’s a profound insight.

A Sabbath is time to be taken out of the humdrum, business of life and into the divine realm of eternity.

I can’t tell you exactly how to observe the Sabbath or when it should be. I can only say that we need a Sabbath.

Read Genesis 2:1-3 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne