Saturday, August 24, 2013

What is Sabbath?

Our texts for this week are Luke 13:10-17 and Acts 3:1-8, which can be read at http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=244361577.



Our Gospel story for this week, an instance where Jesus heals a bent-over woman in the synagogue,
leads to controversy over a question that, I think, we are still asking today:  what is Sabbath?  What does it mean to follow the fourth commandment, one of the ones we most often break--to honor the Sabbath day and keep it holy?

As we approach our Christian Sabbath day tomorrow, I offer a few quotes to spark your thinking. What is the Sabbath day to you? What is the importance of a day set aside for worship, rest, and honoring God? What should such a day look like?

See if any of these ideas resonate with you:

The Sabbath is a "day of promise…a glimpse of God's dominion, a little slice of the messianic age dropped into the midst of regular time." -Richard Swanson

"There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.” -Abraham Heschel
"Like a path through the forest, Sabbath creates a marker for ourselves so, if we are lost, we can find our way back to our center." — Wayne Muller
What sort of Sabbath does your soul need? What does the Sabbath day look like in your life?

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