remember

November 29, 2005

last week, a professor was sharing with us that we often see the work of God in our lives in hindsight. it's only after-the-fact that we take notice that God was involved in the process. what a true statement! this idea of remembrance and reflection has been on my mind the past while. something i've learnt in one of my readings was what sabbath really meant. most of us associate the sabbath with rest. rest means you don't do any work and at first glance, this seems quite obvious.

in the creation narrative, God rests on the seventh day. in other words, He took His sabbath. but then, the question becomes, why would God need to rest? was He tired? did He somehow run out of energy after creating the entire universe and everything within it? the answer is a resounding no! what was the purpose? here it is: it was for reflection and remembrance. God took the seventh day to reflect and remember all that was done during the past six days. i mean think about this for a second. He created the ENTIRE universe and EVERYTHING in it! that's a LOT of stuff. so on the seventh day, it was all about taking in what was done.

that's what the sabbath was all about. so many of us miss having a sabbath in our lives. even if we thought sabbath as resting, who actually rests on a sunday? people work, study, do homework... the list could go on and on. when was the last time you intentionally sat down and took time to reflect on your life? when was the last time you reflected on what God's been doing in your life or what God's been revealing to you? was it a day ago? a week? a month? a year? a couple years?

our culture has lost what it means to be at rest. everybody is so go-go-go that we hardly take time to pause and reflect. people think it a waste of time to journal or to sit around thinking and reflecting. we have no time for activities like that. perhaps the only times it happens are in moments of crisis—when we're forced out of our busyness and made to think about the importance of life. as a result of all of this, so many of us drive through life never realizing the work of God in our lives. we miss the soft, gentle whispers of our God. we miss the gentle promptings of the Spirit. we end up concluding that God is not active. we conclude that He is far and distant. we wonder where God is.

henry blackaby says that God is always at work. that's one of his principles in his book, experiencing God. i read that book a long time ago and i've never forgotten it. if that's true, then where exactly is God working? what exactly is He doing? i think our question could be more readily answered if we took our weekly sabbath. it's just like my professor said. we often see the work of God in our lives in hindsight. if we don't ever look back in the rear view mirror of life and only concentrate on the journey ahead, we miss out on the richness of answered prayers and God revelations through life experiences. we forget everything.

have you ever prayed about something and then forgot that you had prayed about it? i have. i've done it so many times. when God answers, you might attribute it to something other than God, unless you remember that you had previously asked God for that. what about life experiences? i've gone through my share of them. i would never have understood why God allowed me to have fibromyalgia if i didn't take my sabbaths. i would never have understood why God would allow eric to leave this earth so soon if i didn't take my sabbaths (though i don't fully understand this and never will). if we don't pause and reflect about these life experiences, we miss out what God's trying to say to us through them. i believe God uses experiences like these to mold our character and to reveal more about Himself.

sabbath is also helpful for our own character growth. it helps us see if we're becoming more like Christ or less. weekly reflection allows us to think about our interactions with people, our thought life, our words, our actions. we can ask the Spirit of God to help us in the areas that we've stumbled. if we truly desire to bear the fruits of the Spirit, this is crucial. how could we identify areas that need improvement if we don't think about it and ask about it (i suppose you could wait until someone does the difficult task of telling you straight up)?

i hope you see the value of the sabbath. it doesn't have to be a weekly thing either. it could be more regular than that—day-to-day, moment-by-moment. i'm glad that i learnt the importance of reflection early on in my Christian walk. these journals have been extremely significant for my growth and walk in the Lord. it's helped me to see the work of God more clearly and more actively in my life and in the lives around me.

in summary, taking regular sabbaths allows us to:
1. see the active work of God in our lives and in the lives of others
2. see the past work of God
3. see if we're becoming more Christ-like or less

remember. reflect. pause. that's what God commands us to do.

"remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. on it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy" - exodus 20:8-11 [NIV]

Posted by Leo Chan at November 29, 2005 10:15 AM