Keeping the Sabbath

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.


All of you who are parents, have you ever told your children to be quiet? -- Asked them? -- Pleaded with them?

Did it work?

Being quiet is hard work. We spend years studying, learning, gaining new skills just to figure out what we are going to do with our lives. I think that along the way we forget how to just be. When we spend time with our friends and families we need to have an activity … something to do. When we go about our daily lives, we have so many things that we have to get done.

Even when we come to church, we need no know when to stand, when to sit and when to kneel. We need to find that next hymn. We need to be ready to answer to “The Lord be with you.”

(Pause)

Today we listened to a very important lesson about spiritual gifts. We do not chose what gifts God gives to us, but we are expected to make use of them. For the most part we all have different gifts. But there is one gift that God gave to the entire world. God also commanded us to take it. I think this is probably the commandment that we break the most.

God gave us the Sabbath and commanded us to keep it.

Keeping the Sabbath does not mean coming to church or going to synagogue or participating in any other kind of worship activity.

Keeping the Sabbath means setting time aside to just be. Setting time aside to “be” family, not to “do” family. Setting time aside to “be” with our friends, not to “do” something with our friends. Setting time aside to “be” a community gathered for worship, not to “do” worship.

Doing is easy. We are all good at doing, whether it is what we are supposed to do or not. Being is hard. For the next little while, try to just be. Don’t try to do anything. Don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work, when you get distracted by something someone else is doing. That’s okay. We’re all out of practice. God gave us the Sabbath for a reason. If we can only get into the practice of keeping it, it will be obvious why we were given this gift in the first place.

(3 minute silence)

That was only 3 minutes. Imagine what it would be like to do that for a whole day.

Thanks be to God.