Like many of you, I fill nearly every minute of the day with work responsibilities, meetings, appointments, deadlines, family time, and unexpected tasks for which I’ve not planned. Come to think of it, I might be the only one reading this because no one else has the time! Since practically all of my moments are spoken for, I struggle to stop without feeling like I should be doing something. But maybe the solution is to take the advice that was shared by one missionary: “Don’t just do something—stand there.”
Earlier this week, my regular time of Bible reading just so happened to take me to a familiar passage, the 23rd Psalm. Verses 1-3a tell us, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside quiet waters; he refreshes my soul.” As I considered those words, one phrase jumped out to me, as though I’d read it for the first time: “He makes me lie down.” It’s almost as if God forces me to stop because it’s so important to Him that I rest.
I should not have been surprised by that. After all, we know from the Bible that God set a pattern from the beginning of creation: six days of work, followed by a day of rest, the Sabbath. As we read in Exodus chapter 20, verses 8-10a: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work.”
Of course we’re not required to observe a strict Sabbath like they were in Old Testament times, but God makes it clear that we have six full days that are all generally the same, and then a seventh day that’s different. That day is full of rest and things that are not the same as other days. God forces us to stop, for our own good. He essentially says to us, “Don’t just do something—stand there.”
“Sabbath” comes from the Hebrew word “Shabbat,” which means to stop, to cease, to end, to rest. God did not create us to have all seven days the same. We are made very specifically to work and to do everything we need to do for six days, but one day, we say, “We’re done.” Our day of rest is so important to God that we should not only obey Him, we should also treat that day with as much respect as we show when we take the Lord’s Supper, when we pray, and when we worship. If we do this on a regular basis (hopefully weekly), we’ll discover what we always do, every time we listen to God: He has our very best in mind.
Troy Burns