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Sabbath Morning Companion
Finding Time for God
If God created the world in six days and the man and the woman on
the sixth of those days, it is instructive that God's next act
was to take a break. After the busy-ness of creating and the j oy
of bringing to life two creatures made in his own image, God
could have told them to get to work. Instead, he stopped and took
time to build something more important than the dressing and
keeping of his garden. He took a break so they could get to know
each other.
I fear sometimes that in our 21st Century lives we spend so much
time doing that we forget about being. For many of us who have
children, activities and responsibilities have taken over our
lives, and we find ourselves chauffeuring from here to there
almost every night of the week, sometimes trying to be in too
many places at the same time.
Add in the responsibilities of earning a living and serving in
various volunteer capacities, and it is no wonder that so many of
us lack the time to spend with our Creator. That's a shame, and I
am convinced God thinks so too. While he did intend us to be
doers (that is, to accomplish things), he also intended us to be
relational beings. Man was put on the earth to dress it and keep
it, but he was incomplete without a soul mate with whom to share
it. And the first thing God did after putting the man and the
woman together was to give them time off to allow them to get to
know each other—and Him—better.
The Commandment says to work six days, and that's a big part of
the command-work, and do, and accomplish, for that is a part of
our mandate. It also commands us to take a break, for we are more
than workers—we are beings, beings born for relationships.
Once a week it makes sense to stop as God did, to cease from our
physical work and the busy-ness of our lives, and to nurture the
eternal relationships of friends, family, and God. The idea of a
Sabbath rest reminds us that this world and all the things in it
will pass away, but the relationships we build will last forever.
The world does its best to cause us to forget that. We are
tempted to focus on the now rather than on eternity, and that can
too easily succumb to the slavery of busy-ness if we have no time
to reflect on the larger matters. It is accurate to say that our
world can rob us of our personhood and make us slaves to its
demands.
It is curious that the Fourth Commandment attaches itself to a
rationale that addresses the issue of slavery: "Six days you
shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the
Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work ...
remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord
your God brought you there by a mighty hand and an outstretched
arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the
Sabbath day" (Deuteronomy 5:13-15).
Anybody who believes that the Sabbath is bondage needs to read
again the above passage. We were given the Sabbath to remind us
that slaves don't get a day off. It is a commemoration of
freedom, which is one of the great gifts that God intends all to
have. He gave the Sabbath day to show that we are not slaves, and
by claiming that day, we are claiming the freedom we have in
Christ and our God-given right to build our relationships rather
than our earthly empires. —Lenny Cacchio
The Sabbath Morning Companion is a regular
column written by Lenny Cacchio of Lees Summit, MO. Lenny is one
of the founders of the Truckers' Bible Study sponsored by the
Kansas City Church of God. For information e-mail l_cacchio@yahoo.com.
TSS
March
- April 2005 The Sabbath Sentinel
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