Sabbath

The practice of the Sabbath offers us the reminder that we can trust God. The first observance of the Sabbath is actually before this passage in Exodus 20 it is found in Exodus 16. Here is where the people have just entered the wilderness. They have escaped from their captors in Egypt. They have been delivered from the army of Pharaoh. They have made it into the Sinai and there is no food. How are we going to live? You recall how they survived. God provided for the people Manna. The word Manna in Hebrew actually means, “What is it?” They were to gather enough each day for the needs of their family. When they gathered too much it would rot over night. Each family was able to gather enough for that day except on the sixth day they were told to gather enough for the Sabbath. Some were not sure that it would be enough and so they went out the next day but there was no manna on the seventh day. The manna they collected on the sixth day was enough.

One of the reasons it is easy for athletes to live as if they will be able to play forever and the same reasons we live our lives often times as if there will always be more time, is because it is very difficult to face the fact that our lives are limited. There are a number of popular songs that have as a premise a person coming to realize how precious life is. In the song someone realizes through the death of a friend or through bad news at the doctor’s office that they are facing the reality of their mortality. But the response is something that is really not possible to imitate. How am I supposed to live as if I were dying? I would want to spend every moment with my children, or my parents. I would want to ring pleasure from every moment of life. This of course is not possible because of our obligations to others. The sustaining answer for us is found in the practice of Sabbath. It is in recognizing that we place our dependence not in our retirement accounts. It is not that we have saved up enough vacation days that at some point we will catch up. We weekly stop from our works to worship God in whom we place our trust.