Life has always been stressful. . . .

Life has always been stressful.  However, in recent years, with advances in technology (mobile phones, wireless internet, laptops, etc.), you can literally work “around the clock”—and a good many of us are!  We eat on the run; we have conference calls while out on the road; we check our emails late into the evening, and again first thing the next morning.

Thankfully, God anticipated all of this, and thus commanded us to rest at regular intervals.  Notice that I didn’t say “strongly recommended.”  Keeping the Sabbath is not a recommendation; it is a requirement.

In fact, it is the longest commandment, and the only one which is explained differently in the Exodus and Deuteronomy versions of the Ten Commandments.  In Exodus, the rationale for keeping the Sabbath is based on the story of creation.  Since God worked six days and rested on the seventh—so should we!

However, when this commandment is stated in Deuteronomy, the reason given is not the creation story, but because “we were once slaves in Egypt and God freed us from our slavery.”  From this perspective, we begin to realize that work, and the incessant tyranny of our schedules, can become just as oppressive as Pharaoh himself!

For example, when we say to ourselves, “If I don’t keep at it, I will never finish on time”—then we become slaves of the clock.  When we say, “If I don’t keep at it, I will never complete my work”—then we become slaves of productivity.  When we say, “If I don’t keep at it, my competition will get ahead of me”—we become slaves of achievement and success.  And of course, the bottom line is that God does not want us to be slaves of anyone or anything.  We have been set free from slavery!

I suppose it really comes down to this: Who is calling the shots in your life right now?  Is it the clock?  Is it the “to do” list?  Is it climbing the corporate ladder?  Because if the answer is anything other than God, then you may need to take a Sabbath break, in order to remind yourself that God is the only One we are called to serve.