The easiest way to keep you from reaching your goals is
simply to keep your mind focused elsewhere.
One of the chief reasons God setup a permanent time-out for humanity
once each week was to try to help us get over our prioritization problems. Consider for a moment the life of a
parent. A parent bares the
responsibility for the care and feeding of a baby. But demands on our finances, to succeed at
our occupation, and maintain shelter for family can often keep a parent so
preoccupied that the real needs of their child go un-met. Of how much more value is the closeness felt
between breast-feeding mother and infant, than formula-fed day care dropped-off
baby. Of how much more value is the tender
words and touch of a father at bedtime and breakfast than the commuter who is
awake long before, and at home long after the child is conscience. Demands of survival are often so acute in
today’s world that parents are choosing special moments to bond with their
children – school plays, concerts, graduations, birthdays, holidays, etc.. There is simply no time to bond on a daily
basis.
Yet to discuss regret, a parent rarely regrets the missed
promotion at work nearly as much as the time lost with toddlers. First steps and first words are not the only
milestones to be cherished. What about
first questions of the meaning of love, of life, and of purpose. How do we impart values without investing our
time? Truth is we are imparting values
like it or not; we pass on the tradition of hard-work, and lack of
intimacy. Time is of such critical
importance, but we manage it as if it were an infinite resource. We fail to recognize hard choices as such,
thinking there is ample time in the future to meet everything we want to
accomplish. But before you know it,
failing health, circumstance and fate, shorten the once thought long-term to an
immediate here-and-now. Regrets are inevitable
when we fail to keep our priorities of what is truly important uppermost in our
mind, our scheduling, and our attention.
God knew far better than we, that evil would work tirelessly
to keep us distracted from what is truly important. The intimacy God would have us experience, we
are kept from simply by keeping us busy.
The intimacy of husband and wife, the intimacy of parent and child, the
special bond between siblings, and of course the life-altering connection
between man and his Savior God – all these relationships matter most in
life. They far outweigh the trivial pursuits
so many of us call our lives. They
require time and attention to grow. They
need to be nurtured. When you begin to
realize this, you begin to understand why the concept of a ‘Sabbath’ is so
important in our world. A God created
time-out for man. Stop what we’re
doing. Stop thinking what we focus
on. Not because what we think about is
wrong, but because what we focus on is robbing us of what is really
important. Until we separate ourselves
from our routines and choose to focus elsewhere can we be free to see what our
choices really are.
When Christ stated “the Sabbath was made for man, and not
man for the Sabbath” He was trying to clear up the misconceptions of the day
that man was obligated to ritualistic observance of the Sabbath. The institution was created and ordained to
help us push our reset button. It is WE
who need to break free from our self-imposed slavery to commercialism,
materialism, and empty pursuits. It is
WE who so desperately need an institution like the Sabbath to give us a day of
rest from the mind-numbing routines we enslave ourselves to. It figures that the Creator of man who wrote
the owners-manual would know best what man really needs to operate effectively. We need a time-out or we being to break down,
stress out, and find ourselves watching our lives pass us by.
Christians however sometimes misinterpret the true value and
meaning of a Sabbath day. They turn
blessing into compulsion. They turn an
exercise in helping us reprioritize into a set of spiritual habits that are
every bit as much a routine as the non-spiritual list of activities in our
lives. The Sabbath becomes a list of
do’s and don’ts that could not possibly encompass the concept of ‘keeping’ the
day holy. No this is just the arrogance
of man, combined with his ignorance and desire for blind structure instead of
profound life-altering thinking that cannot be bound into a list. How does one find his God and reconnect to
Him through a set of arbitrary rules and lists designed to encapsulate morality
without forethought to the values the lie behind it? No, the Sabbath is about prioritization. No singular activity can be evaluated in the
light of the Sabbath the same way by all mankind. Just as each human is an individual, each
relationship with God will also have unique characteristics. What one man finds as bringing peace and
intimacy with his God, another may find no value in.
The guidelines God gave were to help us bring home the point
of prioritizing our lives properly.
First, God should be our number one priority – everything else,
everything good, flows from the first thing we focus on. Second we need to abstain from our career and
commercial pursuits (i.e. our work). We
need to remember that our careers are NOT our lives, only a component of our
lives. Thirdly, we need to refrain from
requiring others to work for us. We must
not be selfish in our time away from work, forcing others to take up our
burdens, but we must allow them to share in the time away from routine. Even our animals, or anything in our domain,
should be allowed a break from the routine.
Lastly God reminds us that He is our creator, and this knowledge should
help us understand that this time-out is for our benefit.
Following these guidelines and understanding the intense
need we all have to reset our priorities makes the Sabbath an infinitely
valuable tool in regaining meaning in our lives and steering clear of
regrets. Should we make the choice to
come away from the world and give our minds the freedom to dwell elsewhere we
can begin to live at a level we never thought possible.
Christians must avoid the temptation to treat religious
goals as weekly habits that occupy our times and schedules with the regularity
of a Swiss watch. Church service with a
planned routine, followed by a meal, followed by a nap, followed by an evening
meeting sound familiar? Many Christians
believe this is ‘keeping the Sabbath’, but is it? Are we truly forcing our minds to break free
from routine, or are we simply altering the content of our routines? Routine limits creative thinking. Routine can easily become forgettable,
non-memorable, meaningless. Christians
develop an unhealthy dependency on their pastor to ‘feed’ them on a weekly
basis. Rather than being forced to
confront God on their own, they seek anonymity within a congregation. Rather than ponder the deeper meanings God
wants to share with them personally, they seek to hear whatever the pastor has
to say – after which they can feel good about criticizing his content and
delivery. Is this routine actually
helping them, or just helping them pass the time. Push the reset button folks. Start thinking in non-conventional ways, the
way the Sabbath was intended.
If we are to live without regret, we must learn to accept
what God wishes for us. We must learn to
accept the happiness He wants to give us.
We must learn to prioritize what is truly important, and keep it
there. We must regularly check ourselves
and insure our priorities have not been altered. We must break free of the distractions of the
stage we live within, and find the freedom only our God can bring …
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