Wrestling with my Spirit

My father who was an avid fisherman spoke about the uniqueness of the Sabbath by saying, "You don't fish on Sunday.  Give the fish a day of rest."  And my mother did the same as her suddenly grown up son came home for a visit from college the first weekend and announced he would be sleeping instead of following the family tradition of going to church.  Whe she heard the announcmement, she simply said, "As long as you sleep under this roof, you go to church."  Her son got up, got dressed, and found his pew.  There was a day when keeping Sabbath was easy as it simply meant abstaining from anything which gave fun and pleasure.   

Later on in life as God began to enter the picture, I learned what He had to say about the uniqueness of the Sabbath.  It was found in Exodus 20:8-10 as one of the Big Ten, "Remember the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor and do all your work.  But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work..."  What seemed simple at first became more complicated as the journey of faith continued.  Being a preacher surely knocked a hole in that Word about not working on the Sabbath, particularly, if I kept the same day as Sabbath as everyone else in the world around me.  The holy Word about resting on the Sabbath became easy to look at with a justifying eye in the beginning and then later it became something just largely ignored with my stamp of personal expediency which said, "Does not apply."   

Of course, it did apply.   What God said about Sabbath keeping applies to everyone even preachers whose biggest work day is Sunday.  The simple solution was to use another day, but even then the root of the problem was ignored and justified.  Sabbath keeping calls us to live a life of balance between work and rest, a life which is rooted in dependency on God to provide, and a response of heartfelt gratitude.  Defining Sabbath by getting out of the pulpit or keeping the lawn mower under the shed trvializes an important holy Word which in my case at least is requiring a life time of spiritual wrestling.