The Sabbath day is not a terribly popular idea. It’s easy to forget that it is one of the 10 commandments and to take it as seriously as, “Thou shalt not murder.” I’m working through the 70 resolutions of Jonathan Edwards and his 38th resolution was…

Resolved, Never to utter any thing that is sportive, or matter of laughter, on a Lord’s day. Sabbath evening, Dec. 23, 1722.

It is clear that Edwards attempted to honor a weekly Sabbath. Sometimes it is difficult to remember that God thought about how we should live way before we were born. He knows how human beings are wired and did not design us to work 7 days a week. According to the Genesis 1 creation account, mankind was created on day 6 and on day 7 they rested. This means that a precedent was set that we should rest first and then work.

It is not surprising to me and it’s probably not surprising to you that our culture gets a lot of things backwards. I feel sometimes that I’m not being a productive human being if I’m not working all the time. I feel like I’m constantly trying to race the clock to produce as much as I possibly can in a given period of time. Stress and anxiety are common emotions that most people simply try to manage in the best way that they know how.

At some point however, we must ask the question….how were we meant to live? I mean really. What was life supposed to look like? Maybe it ought to be much different than what we experience. If we knew that this was the case, would we have the courage to seek it out or would we just keep trying to preserve the status quo?