Finding Our Joy

"If you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord 's holy day honorable, and if you honor it by not going your own way and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,

then you will find your joy in the Lord,...."  Isaiah 58:13-14

We live in a caffeine world. There never seem to be enough new coffees or energy drinks to counteract our constant, collective lethargy. Burnout, exhaustion and fatigue are all too common in our everyday lives. Not only are our bodies tired, but the contentment in our spirits has been extinguished. Are we really toiling beyond reason in our convenience filled world? Is life really so much more stressful than it was for those who went before us? Where did our strength go? Who stole our joy?

In the Old Testament, the Sabbath day of rest and reflection was not optional; it was an unbending commandment from God for His people. The Cross has freed us from keeping the Law and the New Testament does not repeat the command to keep the Sabbath, so in the Christian world it has been reverently displayed in the Museum of Times Bygone and relegated to the ranks of the studious. However, maybe we have exercised our spiritual liberty to the point that our bulging muscles inhibit us from grasping what we desperately need- rest with purpose. Not mindless couch potatoing or constant pleasure seeking, but sacred times dedicated to mindful reflection, deliberate leisure, true human connection and inward stillness. The purpose of the Sabbath was to refresh, recharge and refocus by renewing our God focus, a time to lay down our agendas and pick up God's agenda, to exhale stress and inhale peace and to perceive the divine though confined to the earthly. The principle of the Sabbath was the principle of remembering that we find our joy when we lose ourselves in the rest of a loving God.