You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but on the seventh day you must stop working, even during seasons of plowing and harvest.             Exodus 34:21

It’s a command you know.  You can read the list, it’s number 4.  For some reason we don’t think He means this one.  We’d never consider murder.  Theft just isn’t right. But Sabbath rest is on the iffy side.

Part of me thinks that God put this command in there for other than the obvious reasons.  There are the givens: I rested on the seventh day and you should do as I do, so rest on the seventh day; I didn’t make your bodies to go hard 24-7, so take a day and let them rest; if you focus your attention every day on the burdens of this life, I’m more likely to get squeezed out without your even noticing.

I think He may have had another in mind too.

Sometimes I’ll tell you things that don’t make sense and that don’t appear to lead you in the right direction.  I want you to do them anyway.  Even when you don’t agree or understand.

Our God was not unaware of the pressures of our lives.  He was also not unaware of our tendency to deal with those pressures on His time.  “Even during the seasons of plowing and harvest.”  He knew fully well that there would be seasons of our lives when we just couldn’t get it all done, when there just weren’t enough hours in the day.  He knew it and He said take the break anyway.  He was not missing information, He simply didn’t find the information compelling enough to change the verdict.

You need more time to get your to-do’s done.  You need more quiet hours in the office to catch up.  He knows.  Yet there is no exception clause.  He made sure we didn’t have any grounds for creating one.

Tomorrow doesn’t belong to you.  The Sabbath is His.

Get up, go to church, have some lunch, take a nap, watch some hoops, love on your family, sit in the glorious sunshine and recount the many ways in which the Almighty has lavished His love on you this week, go to bed early.  Monday will come again and you’ll have a lighter burden to carry into it for having obeyed.