Dear Faith Family,
Life with God, a life freed by His efforts, is no walk in the park. It is much more like a pilgrimage through death's shadows, the hazy, foreboding, and nearly alive manifestations of objects standing between us and the light. Good thing we are not alone on the journey! We not only follow One who has gone through the valley but the Good Shepherd back again to walk with us on our turn along the path ancient and everlasting.
As we discussed on Sunday, the place along faith's journey where the Sabbath finds us is not too different from the place it found God's people way back when.
On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. And the Lord said to Moses, "How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day." So the people rested on the seventh day. (Exodus 16:27-30)
Having known bondage and having witnesses to the power of God for them, moving in hope towards a promised better place and yet feeling stuck in the daily grind to live free, the men and women of Exodus 16 were "given" the Sabbath amid the disappoint of the not-immediately-better between what was known and what is believed.
Doing what most of us do when we've journeyed what feels like a long way to end up nowhere far, the first generation of the free grumbled. They complained amongst themselves and to the ones they blamed for the dupe and even to the One who was clearly with them through it all. Instead of the expected swift kick in the rear or a speedy rescue, God gave his fledgling freed people provision for each day. Manna, "the bread of heaven," there for their daily gathering, well, almost every day.
God gave daily bread for living and the expectation for them to labor in His provision, gathering as their usual work of faith. Day after day, they would join God in making a good life along the journey, except for one special day when the provision and labor of the days before would be enough. Enough to cease laboring for life and simply be alive with Him. With their stomachs satisfied by their six-day co-laboring, God gave them a means for their freedom to mature in the seventh day's faith. The Sabbath (re)entered the journey as a means of grace, an experience of reprieve on the road from rescue to maturation as the means for freedom's flourishing.
For six days, God's people had to live and work only for the day, wrestling against the urge to do more, take more, and get more from the day. Whether out of fear of lacking enough for tomorrow, greed's insatiable apatite, slothfulness' slyness of working out of work by working the system, or pride's hunger to control, faith was in a constant battle. But the seventh day was different.
It was a day to resist the creeping shadows blocking the light of Life by simply being free of them. Free not to wrestle with the anxiety, lust, weariness, and ambition in the labors of living but live because they were free already, even if not all the way. A day to rest not only because it is God's good rhythm, nor strictly remembering God was indeed for them and with them, but also as the very means of resisting being lost in the shadows. To keep the Sabbath was to rest as an act of freedom that aided living free between the special days. It still is.
Sabbath, as discussed in detail on Sunday, is a day with God and others to resist all those attitudes, actions, inactions, and words that blind our freedom and stifle our maturing into whole and holy life free in Jesus.
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)
So, as we consider how we keep the Sabbath, we can add to our questions: "What do I need to resist as a practice of being free, even if only for a day?"
The Sabbath was given to live free for a day and form us to live free all the other days too. Still, because we are not too dissimilar from the first generations of our faith family, yet are people who hope for a different life experience between(!), we best ask the Spirit, "Why do I resist the Sabbath?" What shadows still overcast my heart, keeping me from walking in the Light?
For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers. (Hebrews 4:2)
May we ask with confidence, and by faith receive the mercy and grace of One who "sympathizes with our weakness" and delights to "help in time of need" as we follow Him through the valley and into the place of peace matured.
Love you, faith family. God bless!