Scripture

You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but on the seventh day you must stop working. This gives your ox and your donkey a chance to rest. It also allows your slaves and foreigners living among you to be refreshed.

Application

This chapter has laws relating to justice and religious requirements, including the sabbath and the great festivals of Unleavened Bread, Harvest, and Final Harvest.

Our society has completely abandoned the concept of sabbath. The idea that businesses and shops should shut down for one day a week seems quaint and old fashioned.

I live near a railway line, and it amazes me that even on Christmas Day and Good Friday, freight trains leave Narrabri laden with grain or coal. Really? We cannot stop moving non-perishable goods for even one day or two days in a whole year?

Of course, Covid has brought about forced sabbaths for many people because of lock downs and other restrictions. Many people have discovered the restfulness of avoiding the daily commute as they worked form home. Perhaps the Lord is using this pandemic to remind people of the need to rest.

Human beings need the weekly reminder to slow down and rest. We are more than work units or economic consumption units. There is a need for each of us to stop for one day a week, and rest.

Sabbath is trusting God to supply enough in six days to satisfy the seventh. In the wilderness He produced manna that lasted two days, but only on the day before the sabbath.

Prayer

Lord, help me to trust you for my needs, to put you at the centre of my working life, and to worship you in my sabbath rest. Amen.