Joy in the Morning
There are six days for you to work, but the seventh day will be a special day of rest. It is a day for a holy meeting; you must not do any work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your homes.
Leviticus 23:3 (NCV)
Hello Friend,
I didn’t think I would be one of those old people who said, “I remember the good old days,” but here goes anyway. I remember when I was growing up in rural Pennsylvania that on Sundays nothing was open. Not a mall, grocery store, pharmacy, or restaurant was open. Nothing at all. Church in the morning and Sunday dinner at 2p.m. was our routine. Then the afternoon would be spend visiting with relatives or neighbors, a game of badminton, and later a game of hide and seek or catching lightening bugs in a mason jar with holes punched in the lid at dusk. We had no television. And how did we survive without CNN giving us the latest breaking news? How did we ever get by without the internet?
The Hebrew word Sabbath means rest. By the Jewish law given at Sinai the seventh day was to be a day of rest, in which no secular work was to be done, and which was to be kept holy for God. Travel was permitted for no more than a mile and was given the name sabbath day’s journey. How would your Sabbath day routine change if you could travel no more than a mile? Would that curtail your shopping expedition? Would you have a family meal at home instead of eating at the local Outback? Can you have a Sabbath day of rest from the electronics? NO? Really. Why not? Is it because you don’t want to? Carefully look at your Sabbath ritual and decide if you are keeping it holy for God. Taking time to be holy,
Linda