Summer Sabbath

Exodus 20:8-10 Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.

Sadly, we’ve lost the regular practice of Sabbath. Whether on the sixth or the seventh day, the Sabbath was God’s reminder for us to take a break; to rest; to relax; to spend quality time with family; to spend quality time with Him.

We don’t have a Sabbath anymore – most of us struggle to fit in an hour and a half (when you include travel time) to come to church on Sunday. Then it’s off to soccer games, on to yard work, back to the office, off to Walmart. I could preach myself blue in the face, and I don’t think the weekly Sabbath is coming back to American life, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. We don’t have a Sabbath anymore!

But we do have summer. For the ancients, summer was anything but a time of rest and reconnection. It was a time of agricultural labor – hard labor. They worked from sun-up to sundown, and the days are longer in the summer. But we get a bit of a break in the summer. Most of us have a few less meetings, a few less demands, and a bit more time. Most of us get to take a vacation: Another unknown in the ancient world. Although we have lost the practice of a weekly Sabbath, we have another opportunity for Sabbath keeping, and that opportunity is summer.

I invite you to use the lazy days of summer for some Sabbath activities: Take a break, rest, relax, spend quality time with your family, and spend quality time with God. Sabbath is more than just activities; Sabbath is a mindset. It’s a theological mindset that not only puts the feet up, but thanks God for the opportunity to put the feet up. It’s a mindset that lets God rejuvenate the gifts He has given you, so that when you reenter the rat-race, you do it better. It’s a mindset that savors relationship rather than production. Summer is upon us. Will you be better next fall because of it?