“Remember the Sabbath day, to 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. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Exodus 20:8-11).
The 4th Commandment is traditionally associated with church rather than school. Does that mean this Commandment is irrelevant to the life of Providence?
Not at all! In fact, this Commandment is essential to the health and life of the school.
Think of the structure of the Ten Commandments for a moment. The first four establish right worship of God; the later six establish right living among men. Worship flows into morality, and it does so through Sabbath.
You know how much harder it is to be honest, patient, kind, and generous when you’re exhausted. You know that you’re more susceptible to temptation when you haven’t slept.
The command to Sabbath rest isn’t just about going to church. It’s about being a people who literally practice what we preach. We say we want to be like God, so we must do what He does. One of the first things we see Him do in Scripture is to rest. He didn’t rest because He was tired; He rested because we get tired, and He modeled for us how to live in a way that sustains us–almost like Jesus getting baptized, despite being God, to “fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15).
For Israel, Sabbath was necessary as a practice of expressing trust that God would provide for them. We see this in the way they immediately practiced Sabbath after its introduction: gathering manna. They didn’t gather manna on the 7th day–they had to trust that the manna they gathered Saturday would be enough.
Once they were established, the trust was bigger and more consequential. They didn’t harvest in the 7th year, but trusted that the harvest from the 6th would be enough.
Sabbath, then, is about trusting God enough to put down our work and rely on His provision. It’s about letting go of our desire for control.
What do we do with this, then? How do we rest ourselves, and how do we model rest for our children? The image from Scripture is simple–though that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
To do this well, we must first prepare. The Israelites gathered twice the manna before the Sabbath. We have to structure our time to make room for rest.
Second, we must make room for worship. Worship has always been part of Sabbath, and as He himself is our rest and peace (Hebrews 4). This worship is to be done communally, with our congregations, and as families.
Third, we must do restful things. Sabbath doesn’t mean sitting still on the couch for 8 hours. It means doing things through which God can meet us and refresh our spirits. This probably doesn’t mean things like watching TV, since our devices usually distract us more than refresh us. Instead, we benefit from Sabbath more when we do activities that engage the family and make room for joyful conversation. Board games, puzzles, hiking, whatever your family can do that engages you together and disconnects you from the bustle (I recommend leaving phones out of it, whatever you do).
Once again, I recognize that this is hard. It may even seem impossible–but it’s not! It will be easier if we do it together, too. God built it into the culture of Israel, and it sustained them in their good years. We need to do the same.
More next week.
— Anderson Underwood
