I am aware that even as I type this, the Sabbath is over. From sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. It is dark outside. The sun set around 5:30 pm our time. The rest is over. The rememberance that God made the earth and when he was done, He rested, is recalled and we note that we too need rest.

Like the statement, “it is not good for man to be alone”, it is not good for man to work 7 days a week. We are finite beings, and if the infinite God needed to rest, well, so do we.

I read this today as part of my daily habit of paying attention to Scripture DAILY. From the 12th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel.

Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, ¹⁰ and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?”

¹¹ He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? ¹² How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

¹³ Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. ¹⁴ But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.

Mark Buchannan’s book The Rest of God has been for me, one of the great books of my reading lists. I have returned to it, and relied on it, for my own understanding of “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

We need a Sabbath. We need it due to stress, due to our own health needs, for contemplating our family and their needs, for the rejuvenation of our body and our souls.