Written by Mark Roberts, a contemporary author. This is an excerpt from his work “Unwrapping the Gift of Sabbath.”
God has given us many gifts, of course, more than we can count. Some are wonderfully obvious, like the gift of newborn life. Some gifts, however, are not quite as obvious. They need to be unwrapped. One of these gifts-needing-unwrapping is rest, or to use the official biblical term, sabbath… The sabbath isn’t some peculiar human tradition. It is something made by God. Moreover, the fact that the sabbath was made “for humankind” implies that sabbath – regular rest – is a good gift from God. God established the sabbath for us . . . that is, for our rest, our restoration, our worship, our well-being, and our joy. For faithful practitioners of the sabbath, the fact that it is a gift from God is plain to see. They unwrapped it long ago, after all. But for many of us who are not as familiar with observing regular times of rest, the sabbath doesn’t reveal its benefits so clearly. Rather, we need to unwrap God’s gift of rest by looking closely at what Scripture says about sabbath. We need to ask the questions that rise up in our hearts, questions like, “If God made the sabbath for us, what is God’s purpose? Why does God want us to set aside times for rest? What’s the point of this gift? What does it mean for us to receive and practice it?” I’d encourage you to think about your own understandings and practices related to sabbath. Moreover, I’d urge you to reflect on what it means that God made the sabbath “for humankind.” To be more specific, what does it mean to you that God made the sabbath for you?
Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. [Mark 2:27]
Pathways Press.com 