A Return To Civility: 4 Keep The Sabbath Series

What a crazy world we live in today.

Do you ever feel like the Rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland”? You know the one, he’s always rushing this way and that looking at his watch and muttering, “I’m late, I’m late”.

It seems that every hour of every day is filled to the limit with things that need doing and we never seem to have enough time to do it all. How often have you caught yourself wishing for more hours in the day or more days in the week so that you could finally catch up and finish everything that you are supposed to do?

That wouldn’t do any good though. We all know Murphy’s law and some of us know about Newton’s law of gravity. But are you familiar with Parkinson’s Law, first outlined in the middle of the last century? 1955. It was developed by C. Northcote Parkinson who wrote, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

And so regardless of how much time you have available you still won’t have enough.

And if you were granted your wish of having an extra day in each week your stress level would simply be added to, because you would have one more day to try to jam too much into. Maybe instead we should wish for shorter days with fewer days in the week to limit our crazy schedules.

Modern technology promised us that all of the new conveniences would save us time and make our lives easier, but in the workplace, computers, the internet, and cell phones have increased the pace of our work rather than reducing it.

At home, dishwashers, washing machines, vacuums and microwaves have made life easier but to go back to Parkinson’s law, work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

And so mothers lose the time they saved to carting the kids around to hockey, music and school activities. Even our kids are stressed out because so much of their time is scheduled and there is so little time to just be a kid, playing and allowing their imaginations to run wild.

It is a never ending circle that seems to escalate over time until finally, there is no more time. Henry Twells an English poet who lived in the 1800’s wrote:

When as a child I laughed and wept,

Time crept.

When as a youth I waxed more bold,

Time strolled.

When I became a full-grown man,

Time RAN.

When older still I daily grew,

Time FLEW.

Soon I shall find, in passing on,

Time gone.

O Christ! wilt Thou have saved me then?

Amen.

And a little less poetic, but just as true, it was Andy Rooney who said, “I've learned that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.”

This is week 5 of our series, A Return to Civility. And it came about when I wondered if the culture that we are living in, where we are no longer free to agree to disagree and where public discourse has de-evolved into rude, intolerant name-calling, is the result of the lack of a mutual morality that we used to share.

There was a time when most North Americans attended a weekly worship service, and one of the things we shared, was this short list of rules called the Ten Commandments.

And it is in this crazy rushed world we live in that we would like to re-introduce the fourth commandment which reads Exodus 20:8–11 Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.

The Sabbath, a day of rest, seems to be archaic today in the year 2024.

And maybe you’re thinking “Well sure, that was fine back then when people didn’t have as much to do, as far to go, but no sir, not for 2024. In 2024 we need every hour of every day and every day of the week to get done what we have to get done.” And that technical term for that my friend is a crock.

Please remember one cardinal rule of life, “You do, what you want to do.” The fourth commandment was not given just for the people of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness, and it wasn’t just given for Jesus and his disciples, it wasn’t just given for John Wesley and the early Methodists in the 1700s or and it wasn’t just given for your grandparents. The fourth commandment is as valid today as it was 30 years ago, 200 years ago, 2000 years ago or 4000 years ago.