Seize the Moment – Day 379
Stopping is Holy Work!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Wednesday, March 31.
Do you find it hard to take a day off in your busy schedule? Do you find it challenging to disconnect from social media for a day? Do you find it hard to not buy or sell something whenever you want to? Do you have trouble turning off your worry?
Sabbath means “to cease” and is rooted in God’s creative intent, as recorded in Genesis 2:1-3:
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
God sanctified, made holy, the seventh day because it was the day that He rested to delight in His completed work. Interestingly, in the Genesis creation account, only the Sabbath day is called “holy.” Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel commented,
It is, indeed, a unique occasion at which the distinguished word qadosh is used for the first time: in the Book of Genesis at the end of the story of creation. … There is no reference in the record of creation to any object in space that would be endowed with the quality of holiness.[1]
Here is the key point: stopping is God’s idea! Boundaries on your work and worry are a good thing! When we cease striving, we will know that He is God. Sabbath is a faithful practice of proclaiming the preeminence of Jesus Christ in our lives!
Seize the moment and submit to God’s creative intent for rest! Stopping is holy work!
Let’s recite this week’s memory verse from Exodus 6:7a, “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.”
YOUTUBE:
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 9.