honors response 7

Growing up, my Sundays, and weekends for that matter, consisted mostly of soccer. Probably about 2 weekends every month I would be out of town at a soccer tournament.  When I didn't have soccer, I'd go to church and then we would clean the house.  That's how it went in my house.  I didn't realize until this past week in class, that that is not how a lot of families spend their Sundays.  It shocked me how many people were telling me that in their house, Sunday was a day of rest...aka the Sabbath.

I mean, I know what the Sabbath is.  A day of rest. But that's just not something my family and I have practiced, after all, I come from a family of 9, all of whom are in sports.  I just thought that it was something that people in the biblical times did, and no one today did.

But is it really a day set apart?

Throughout our whole discussion on Thursday about the Sabbath and from what we read in Living the Sabbath by Norman Wirzba, I kept thinking that maybe the Sabbath is more of a state of mind.  Okay, I'm not saying that it's only a state of mind or its only a day set apart for rest, this is just what I was thinking about.

Wirzba states, "So what is at stake in Sabbath observance is not simply that we manage to pause and refuel enough to continue on in our frantic and sometimes destructive ways.  The real issue is whether we can learn to see, and then welcome, the divine presence wherever we are." (23-24)

Just this simple statement makes me think that maybe the Sabbath doesn't always have to be a specific day.  I just think that if the Sabbath is only one day of the week where we totally focus on God, then does it give us an excuse to do whatever we wanted the other days of the week, just as long as we take a step back from our daily lives once a week? I know that might be taking things to the extremes, but it can happen.  Wirzba's statement above makes me think that the Sabbath is more of a state of mind in that we are at peace with our lives and with God, just knowing that He is in control and He is everywhere, looking over us.

What I struggled with is why does Sabbath always mean a specific day to be set apart? Yes, it's always good to have a specific day set apart for God.  But it's so easy to just put Him on the back burner throughout the rest of our week because He's already taking up an entire day so we have to make up for that day.  But if we go throughout each of our days acknowledging Him and His greatness, that seems to be the more, for lack of better words, effective.