I'm so busy!

I am so busy. If I even attempted to explain how busy I was, it would take me the length of this article to explain all the things I have to do in order to accomplish my goals on a daily basis. Now, if truth be told, the fact that I am too busy to articulate my schedule may in fact be an indication that something is severely wrong with my life right now. I was asked to write an article on the Sabbath and rest seems to be the very thing I need right now. Carl Gustav Jung is quoted as saying “Busyness is not just FROM the Devil, it IS the Devil.” This way of thinking seems foreign to my current life. The fact that I am American speaks volumes to the current state of my day. It seems like it is conventional wisdom to think that if you are going to be successful in the United States, then you must always be busy. I don’t know if busyness is the Devil or not, but I am sure that the busier I get the less chance I have to develop intimate relationships in my life. Again, I look at my life and I think, what is this success that I am striving for? Is this type of success worth it if it pulls me away from genuine relationships that matter? In order to understand the spiritual significance of the Sabbath we must look at this as a command, then as an invitation. Jesus said, 'The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath: therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.' (Mark 2:27, 28) Here we see that Jesus is verifying his authority with the religious leaders of his day, but he also makes a periphery point that is essential for our understanding of God’s intent of the Sabbath. Jesus declares that this command was given to ‘benefit man.’ The religious leaders of Jesus’ day had it wrong. Mankind did not exist to obey the Sabbath. The Sabbath was created to benefit man. How is this so? Let’s look at the next Scripture of importance. The Lord said through the prophet Ezekiel, “I gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I, Jehovah, sanctify them” (Eze 20:12). The prophet says clearly that the Sabbath was given that the people of God may know him! How is this so? The Sabbath restricted the movements and work load of the Jewish people. The only thing a Jewish person could do was to spend that time developing his or her relationship with God and his or her family. The fact is many people looked at the Sabbath as simply another command instead of seeing the reality that God’s heart was that his children would use the Sabbath as an opportunity to build on their relationship with him and their families. Hebrews 4:9 says “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his.” Thus for the believer observing the Sabbath is getting a glimpse at a profound spiritual truth that has been revealed by the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Jesus’ amazing sacrifice has opened the door for all those who believe to enter the ultimate Sabbath. His death opened the door for an unending and an uninterrupted intimate relationship with God. So, we wait on the day that this web of rest, busyness and relationship, that can best be observed in the lives of the great patriarchs in the Scriptures will become a habit of our own. And, our hope is that the fruit of this habit will develop a greater hope for the Ultimate rest that will be ours because of the busyness of Christ.