HEALTH DevotionAL

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Ex. 20:8, NIV.

Do you sometimes feel you’re losing the battle with busyness? Take advantage of God’s winning weapon: the Sabbath.

The fourth commandment says: “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” (Ex. 20:9, 10, NIV).

During the six days of labor each week you may feel you’re coming apart at the seams. But one day each week you receive permission-yes, are commanded-to come apart in a different way.

• Come apart from the noise of alarm clocks, machinery, traffic, telephones.
• Come apart from the information-bearers: newspaper, radio, TV, fax machines, and computers.
• Come apart from the rush: schedules, Day-Timers, freeways, airports, taxis, watches.
• Come apart from the clamoring for decisions: those endless committee meetings and conference calls.
• Come apart from the busyness of life-and rest in the assurance of God’s love, His salvation, and the value that He places on you-not on what you do.

The Sabbath commandment is more for us today than for any people in human history. Of the Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel writes: “There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.”

During the week our very self-image becomes embroiled in our busyness. The Sabbath, however, rests on a revolutionary concept: we have value beyond what we produce. God values us just for being us, for being His children. That’s what the Sabbath is all about.

As Tilden Edwards notes: “Stopping work tests our trust: will the world and I fall apart if I stop making things happen for a while?”

The busyness of modern life cripples our stamina, wounds our self-image, shatters our joy. But the Sabbath celebrates the wonder of being totally alive.

Lord, thank You for the Sabbath. How wonderful it is that You have created that day for us so we can rest from the busyness of life.

Used by permission of Health Ministries, North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.