This Idea of Rest

The end of August marks my first full month as a homeowner- and am I ever exhausted.  After a hard day of work, my evenings generally involve unpacking or a variety of home setup/maintenance activities.  Two little children are a pleasant but additional energy drain, meaning that I need rest now more than ever.  How do I get it? 

In the Biblical book of Exodus, God lays down Ten Commandments for his people to follow.  Most people know of them.  It's very interesting to me that one of them is a command to keep the Sabbath- the day of rest.  In fact, more words are dedicated to that commandment than any other in the chapter.  The full text on it reads:

⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 8:8-11, ESV)

If you wanted to summarize this, you could say "work for six days, rest for one."  It's a command- not a suggestion- and apparently important enough in God's mind to make it one of only ten given to the people at that time.  Both components here are important:

1. We should be working for six days.  Not procrastinating, not laying around: working.  That doesn't mean, of course, at a paying job necessarily- nor does it imply that any breaks, however short, during those days are forbidden.  It just means this: we all have responsibilities- at work and home- and we are to get those done over six days.
2. We should be resting on the seventh day.  Not working, doing chores, etc: resting.  That doesn't mean, of course, sleeping all day- nor does it imply that you can't lift a finger.  There are several cases in the Bible when Jesus heals on the Sabbath, and He does so deliberately to show people they were missing the point of the day.  It's not about doing nothing; it's about recovering physically, mentally, and spiritually.

In the New Testament, Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, and was derided by some for so doing.  His response is telling:

²⁷ And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:27, ESV)

I love this verse, because it shows us God's heart- He didn't create us to follow rules; He created rules to help us.  Here He speaks specifically of the Sabbath, but this is true for other things as well.  I digress, but it's an important point to keep in mind: God gives us these rules for our benefit.

So, in summary, God commands us to work for six days, rest for one, and He does so for our benefit.  What might this look like in our lives?

I do many things poorly, but something I did pretty well in college was observe the Sabbath.  I majored in electrical engineering- hardly a cakewalk- and I maintained a busy athletic and activity schedule on top of it.  From 6am to 10pm Monday through Friday, I was doing something, and Saturdays were pretty busy, too- but Sundays were free.  No homework, no studying, no working out; It was delightful.  I found it really segmented the semester nicely, and made a crazy schedule possible.  With me, it wasn't get to the end of the semester; it was get to Sunday.  Just get to Sunday.  And that, I found, was psychologically, mentally, and physically easier to achieve.  A typical Sunday for me involved Church, brunch with friends, quiet reflection, rest, reading, games with friends (many a Sunday afternoon was spent playing Star Wars CCG), a small dinner (consisting almost entirely of ice cream), and perhaps watching sporting events.  I saw firsthand that, as Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made for man." 

As the years went on, I've grown less disciplined.  I still don't do much on Sunday- but I do more than I ought.  As a result, I feel less rested.  I need to get back to it.  May I  have the self-discipline and endurance to get my work done in six days, and rest on the seventh.  It's how we were made to operate.