Tuesday, May 25, 2010

A Few Thoughts from Pastor Chris

How well do you remember your ten commandments? We three pastors are in the middle of confirmation interviews and one of the requirements of these students is to memorize the 10 Commandments, the Apostles Creed and the Lord's Prayer. For the next portion of this blog consider yourself in the middle of one of these interviews. The question that I want you to answer is how well do you follow the third commandment? Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy. How well are you living up to this commandment? We are a culture that prides ourselves on how much we can get down, how productive we are, how well we multitask and we are driven to be this way because the more we accomplish the more we are rewarded and we quickly find ourselves merged into the rat race.

Now working hard is by no means a sin. Working hard is a part of our DNA and God wants us to work hard but he also knows that we need to rest, hence the third commandment. If we continue to push ourselves and consume latte after latte eventually we will run out of gas and hit a brick wall. When we reach that point we are useless. How well are you obeying the third commandment?

We are about to enter a season that many of us look forward to, the summer, and with the summer comes the summer vacation. Is summer vacation a chance for you to find sabbath? Our summer vacation will involve a 1400 mile one way drive to the boundary waters in northern Minnesota. Believe me this does not sound like a sabbath to me. For some of us our summer vacation will include a ride to the airport, followed by lay overs, delays, lost luggage and bags that require a $50 ticket. Will you find sabbath here? We need sabbath but too often we feel we cant afford it or fit it into our busy schedules.

One of the Jesus stories that I struggled with for a long time involved Jesus going off to a lonely place to pray. Poor Jesus is off all alone and all by himself. But what is he doing in this lonely place. He is praying. He is reconnecting with God. He is finding sabbath. Now if the son of God needs sabbath how much more do we? I can't tell you what your sabbath should be, we are all created differently and we all connect with God in different ways but we all need sabbath, we all need to reconnect with God. So again I ask you, how well are you following the third commandment?

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