Monday, March 6, 2017

Exodus 23:12 By: Kim Cox

“Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed." Exodus 23:12

  Everyone loves the idea of taking a day off, right? Maybe I sit on a beach somewhere, sip my pina colada, not a care in the world. Well, strange enough, God commands us to take a day off! (drink and location to be determined) 
 The fourth commandment is to “keep the Sabbath day holy”. And as taught to the students of this church,  the commandments are not harsh berating rules, but rather gifts from God to help us walk in a way that aligns our lives to him. Jesus Christ states to the Pharisees in Mark 2 that “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. And what is the Sabbath? A DAY OF REST! A day to stop the bustle and hustle of the world, to breathe, to remind yourself of who God made you to be, to stop working, to stop trying and just be…… still…. This gift, to take a day of rest, was so defended in biblical times that even the lowest had to uphold it, and they too get to benefit from it; the slave, the animals, and the foreigner. 
 We stop, we remind our souls who God created us to be and in this we are drawn to the world outside of ourselves. We become aware of the weary “foreigner” among us and we become mindful of their needs. We find the gift of human connection and refreshment because we decided for one day, one day a week we would not be student or teacher, lawyer or doctor, worker or traveler, we would be solely children of God, called to the strangers beyond our own mind and we would discover that we were strangers no longer; that we all are actually loved and treasure by the same good Father. 

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