A Sabbath Day’s Journey

Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it (Hebrews 4:1).

We find that we’ve been running at a rather frantic pace—all our own commitments and rushing kids from place to place. We woke up Sunday morning; slept soundly in till eight. Considering our schedule, that’s sleeping in quite late. We both still felt exhausted so decided not to budge. (We’d been to church the night before, so don’t you start to judge.)

We were wide awake now; no way we’d get more sleep, so we talked about the Sabbath rest: the commandment no one keeps.

If even God Himself required rest one day in seven, why can’t we do His will on earth, the way it is in heaven? He cautions us lest busyness our Sabbath should intrude: what makes us think we can run non-stop and still not come unglued?

God desires to speak to us, but His voice is still and small; and if we won’t get really quiet, we won’t hear Him at all. He knows if we don’t practice shutting down each week, our head get full and noisy and we can’t hear Him when He speaks.

Our ancient fathers geared their lives to a very different clock: no one worked on Sundays—they just sat around and talked. The children were admonished not to run and shout and play, and were taught to keep things mellow on the sacred seventh day. No one travelled anywhere except the shortest trip. They spoke of “a Sabbath day’s journey” and strictly honoured it.

It seems they understood back then—and it seems we never will—that the mind and heart cannot slow down if the body won’t sit still.

Greg got up for a minute, then crawled back in and said, “‘A Sabbath day’s journey’: to the bathroom and directly back to bed!”

We stayed in bed and talked till noon, feeling mighty fine. Tension slowly seeped away, letting everything unwind. We got up and had some “brekkie”; then on the couch I dozed some more while Greg played card games with the kids beside me on the floor.

But he finally pulled himself aside from this low-key family fun, saying one thing he should really do is go for a good hard run. See, he had some tests a while ago to check his blood and all, and it turned out he has a problem with his cholesterol. The doctor says to exercise, get his health back up to par. Yet whatever a Sabbath day’s journey is, it isn’t very far.

We respect the doctor’s orders; they shouldn’t be ignored. But how to obey the doctor—and the Sabbath of the Lord?

Well, he looked after his cholesterol, yet did his soul no harm: we’ve got a treadmill—he took a trip and never left the farm.

There remaineth . . . a rest to the people of God. . . . Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest (Hebrews 4:9,11).