I’ve been noticing more lately as my kids are growing, how fast time goes… It was almost 4 years ago already we moved to the Keokuk area! I’ve had a son since, who’s already running around. And my daughter has grown, learned to walk, and talk, and starting kindergarten soon! Somehow before my eyes, time seems to be going by ever more rapidly.
At our family retreat a couple weeks ago, I was talking with the families about Sabbath. We discussed the importance of Sabbath and how difficult it is, to pause and have quality time together. I was reading in a book about a family’s experiment with Sabbath. The author and her family were like many families, going at breakneck-speed trying to get to everything, and they realized they had to do something about it. On a whim, the author said to her husband, “what about Sabbath?” And so they began to try it. Although the author admits her family’s continual struggle with holding to a Sabbath, she suggests, that pausing for a day, slowing down, forgetting the errands and the chores, and the kids’ activities for a day, has been a great gift, a sort of “hack” for passage of time.
Jesus said that Sabbath was made for the good of human beings, they were not made for the Sabbath.” The truth of the second half of Jesus’ statement is readily apparent. How hard it is to pause, slow down, and take time to just be. “We were not made for the Sabbath…” But there is yet truth, in what Jesus says first, that “the Sabbath was made for the good of human beings…” It’s more than likely that Jesus knows what he’s talking about here. If you wanna join a worthy experiment, it’s my goal to see what gift Sabbath may have to offer.