You'd think I would have learned my lesson by now. I also think this is how many of us go through life: wait until the batteries are run down to critical and then recharge. Work, work, work like a dog and then finally take that grand summer vacation. But sometimes it's too late and so even the time off becomes toil and we resent how exhausted we are from vacation.
God offers us something different: a regular time to recharge, a sabbath rest. Better: God gives us a rhythm of life perfectly suited to how we are made as his glorious human creatures, a pattern of work and rest. Six days of work and a day of rest. (I suppose there is something to be said for a regular vacation or two after the pattern of the Jubilee Year, but that is a discussion for another day.) Rest. Recharge. Before the "critical battery alarm" goes off.
Another option, of course, is keeping the laptop plugged in all the time. No hassles with plugs or critical battery warnings. But the computer battery experts say: "Don't do it! You'll ruin your battery life. It won't hold a charge after a while." For me, this is analogous to the soul that seeks an "endless vacation" (I actually found a magazine with this title at a relative's house). Many of us have been there too: working only for the next vacation, the next break. T.G.I.F. Dreading Mondays. But this denies the goodness of work. Yes, work is tainted by sin, but it is first God's good gift to us.
There is even more good news. We believe that our Lord Jesus perfectly fulfills all of God's commandments, including the one about sabbath keeping. He is repeatedly confessed in the Scriptures as Lord of the Sabbath and he has more than a few things to say and do about it. He gets into trouble with the religious leaders for "breaking" the sabbath when in fact he is fulfilling it and deepening our understanding of it. And Jesus fulfills it perfectly and completely by resting on that Holy Saturday, the Sabbath of Sabbaths as the Lord of Creation rests in the tomb.
Because Jesus has fulfilled the Sabbath, we don't have to get bent out of shape or nitpick about the details of Sabbath keeping: Jesus has filled full the Sabbath and he invites us to drink deeply of Him. He is the Living Water. He is our Rest. Come to me, you weary ones, He invites us.
As summer seems to go by more and more quickly each year, what might it mean for us to embrace both the goodness of work and the blessedness of sabbath rest...before the critical battery alarm goes off?
Yessssssssssss
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