Sabbath by Eugene Peterson

Lately the Lord has been speaking to me a lot about how we modern Christians take the Sabbath. It’s been so heavy in my spirit the last several weeks that I had to post about it. If we are truly living the first commandment out then we are already placing God first, though I am sure that many of us are not there and/or fail often. Coupled with that is the scripture that tells us to remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy. In my quiet time God has been showing me what this means to His heart at this time. God is looking for more time to spend with us. More time to reveal His will and direct our steps in that. More time to revel in the beauty of His children, His creation, His bride. Wont we accommodate Him? Wont we sacrifice, if you can call it that, this one day a week so be quiet? To silence the world around us, media, phones, tv’s, movies, friends, family? Those things that we consider urgent and emergency? How could anything take us away from the beauty and rest in His presence as we go deeper and more silent to seek His face? Just a few things to ponder, silently, perhaps this next Sabbath. Love you all and hope this blesses you as much as it did me The next writing is from Eugene Peterson.

Sabbath is the time set aside to do nothing so that we can receive everything, to set aside our anxious attempts to make ourselves useful, to set aside our tense restlessness, to set aside our media-saturated boredom. Sabbath is the time to receive silence and let it deepen into gratitude, to receive quiet into which forgotten faces and voices unobtrusively make themselves present, to receive the days of the just completed week and absorb the wonder and miracle still reverberating from each one, to receive our Lord’s amazing grace.

Sabbath is one of the great gifts that God has given us. Every day of creation is “good” – good for receiving all that God has created, good for participating in the work of God, good for working in God’s garden, good for naming and caring for what God has given, good for being a “helpmate” with and for another. But Sabbath is distinguished from the first six days of each week by being holy, a day set aside to be present to God, to assimilate and celebrate all the gifts of creation and salvation.

Tags: Eugene Peterson, Sabbath