Volume 05, Issue 08: How to Honour the Sabbath

Keeping the Sabbath for ones like me has to be intentional. I am a neat freak. I clean and organize all the time. I am happy running a wash and sprucing up the house all the time. I actually find satisfaction in such mundane tasks. For me to keep the Sabbath rest I have to be real intentional about it.

I love reading. My best pass time is being cozy at home reading a book or writing. But I haven’t always recognized this as my Sabbath activity. Sometimes I do it for production and on those occasions, it can’t count for a Sabbath activity.

For those of us with young families, we need to get away from the mad rush that characterizes Sunday mornings in our homes and develop practices that will help our children value the Sabbath. Make the Sabbath a special day when you slow down as a family and do activities that strengthen your bond and build your legacy.

What are the things that can help us honour the Lord’s Sabbath correctly?

Unplug from all work, from the fast pace of life and the rat race and mad rush that typifies living in the fast lane today. Unplug from the hurry and anxiety, and the temptation to check every notification on your phone. Do no work but rest.

Do only what is restful for your body, for your soul, for your mind, and what recharges your batteries.

Sabbath rest means doing what is restful for your body, what is refreshing for your soul, what is revitalizing for your mind, and what recharges your batteries. Honour the Lord’s Sabbath by taking time to refresh your soul in a way that is uniquely you.

For some people, this means being friends, for some its cooking, for other its listening to music, or watching movies, or reading, and for others its being out in nature, you know, going out for hikes and mountain climbing kind of activities.

However, we spoil our rest if rest has to be productive. If on my Sabbath day I put myself under pressure to finish reading a book so I can speak on the subject at a soon coming seminar, then I ruin my Sabbath. If you love baking, and it’s something you do on your Sabbath day, you usually try out a new cake recipe. If on a particular Sabbath you feel under pressure to bake like 5 cakes because you have several visitations to make in the coming week, then this is no longer rest but production. It is work, something you should do on a day other than your Sabbath day of rest.

Sabbath means worship and gathering with the Lord’s people. We cannot separate spending time in God’s presence from the Sabbath. It’s refreshing to me to realize that God considers my setting my work aside to rest as an act of worship. This reveals the caring nature of our God. He cares enough for us to want us to get some rest. How nice.

Sabbath rest applies to our employees and servants as well. In spite of the needs of our young families, we need to figure out how to ensure our servants get a full Sabbath’s rest. We break God’s command if we don’t give our workers the opportunity to honour the Lord’s Sabbath.

If you are a young mother where getting everybody ready for church on a Sunday morning is nothing short of crazy, let alone getting through meal preparations and feeds for the day and preparing the kids for school the next day, maybe a Saturday evening church service is just what you need. This way you can have your house girl help you get the kids ready for church on Saturday afternoon, help with meal preparations for Sunday before hand, so that come Sunday morning or Saturday evening, she is free to take her Sabbath rest, and you too can have Sunday free from all the hustle and bustle.

The reality of life is that we have to do our grocery shopping, attend meetings, clean and wash this and that. But not on the Sabbath.

If we are going to honour the Sabbath, we need to prepare beforehand and be intentional about it. One of the 6 days that we work should be dedicated to do all the things that would be a distraction on the Sabbath. Running errands, grocery shopping, business meetings, and so on. Whatever it is that you have to do, do it then so that on the Sabbath day you can rest.

Plan ahead if you are going to honour the Sabbath as you should. Don’t expect it to just happen. If there are meals that need to be prepared, do it before. If there’s washing and house cleaning to be done, plan for that. Then you can rest on your Sabbath day and don’t need to do those things.

Now, all these sound nice and dandy. But life doesn’t always follow our plans. There are times when emergencies come up. Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath. The one thing we cannot exclude from the Sabbath is to be kind, to extend God’s grace and to be a blessing. Occasionally, your donkey will fall in a hole. Do what is needful and rescue it. But there’s something wrong if your donkey keeps falling in a hole every other Sabbath. Something is wrong if you always have to wash on a Sabbath. That’s your lack of preparation for the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is not a burden. It should be a day we look forward to. The Sabbath is our gift to rest.

Lillian Chebosi