Sabbath Thought – Needful Rest

One of the curses of our age is the pace of life. All around us there is non-stop activity. Many years ago, when Roxanne and I lived in Pasadena, CA the apartment complex where we lived was only a block or so north of the highway. The highway planners had lowered the highway so that there were walls on either side – this was done primarily to force the road noise up and away from the surrounding neighborhoods. On any given night of the week the traffic on that highway never seemed to let up. If I woke up in the middle of the night the traffic was as thick as most small cities at rush hour. It amazed me that even at 2 or 3am there were thousands of people still running to and fro.

It is no small irony that with all the technology and electronics available to us we live in a time of unprecedented stress. It seems that even with all our labor and time-saving devices we have less time than ever to simply relax. Families are overcommitted with work, errands, chores, school activities and more. The stress of the world around us comes with a heavy price. More and more evidence supports the understanding that many of our modern illnesses and sickness are created or compounded by stress in people’s lives. We in God’s church are not immune from this stress.

So, what is the solution? Any time we purchase a new device it comes with an owner’s manual to help understand how to use and take care of the device properly. This life we have comes with its own owner’s manual, although most of mankind is unaware of it. Our owner’s manual is the Bible, and in God’s Word we are given a very fundamental command to take care of ourselves in Exodus 20:8-11 – this is the command to observe the Sabbath day. In resting on the Sabbath day, we have the opportunity (in one application) to break the cycle of our work week and to break the cycle of stress in our life.

Scientists who study stress have concluded that the amount of work, the type of work, or the length of the task is not as critical in dealing with stress as the simple action of taking a break from the work. In the mechanical world a motor that is never turned off wears out faster than a motor that is allowed to “rest” periodically – even if the total hours of load on them both is equal. The Sabbath day is not something God seeks to impose upon mankind, rather He designed the Sabbath for man so that we can rest from our labor (Mark 2:27).

Is your life busy? Do you need more sleep? Would it be nice to have extra time to simply talk and be with your family? God sought to give mankind a blessing in the Sabbath day, so that we would have time to step back from the cares of this life to destress and to ponder the wonderful future God has in store for all of mankind.

I wish you a restful (and de-stressing) Sabbath,

Dan Dowd

9 August, 2025