The laws regarding “keeping the Sabbath day holy” were intended to give workers a day off so that they could do what they wanted to do rather than what some one else, their bosses, wanted them to do.
But there is a perverse human instinct to turn freedom into bondage. Thus down through the ages the laws of the sabbath were turned on their head so that new bosses, usually of the clerical variety, began to lay down what was and was not permissible on the Sabbath.
Is it time to reconsider the true meaning of the Sabbath rest?
“Every soul, every spirit, needs to rest, to empty out so that there is room for the pressures of life that are a part of life”, writes Susan Smith in the Washington Post.
“Our human spirits have a finite capacity to carry stress, issues and problems. We get filled up with the “riff raff” of life more quickly than we know it, and when we do, our capacity to function maximally is severely decreased. Our patience grows short; our ability to make sound, emotion-less decisions is hampered, our relationships, even with the people we love, are compromised.”
Susan K Smith, is a Yale Divinity School graduate, and author of “Crazy Faith: Ordinary People; Extraordinary Lives”, a winner of the 2009 National Best Books Award.