Tag Archives: Saturday

TGIF

March 20, 2025 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

“‘There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a day of sabbath rest, a day of sacred assembly. You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a sabbath to the Lord.’”
Leviticus 23:3 (NIV)

It has been so woven into the fabric of our lives for so long that we don’t even think about it. It is universal. It is unequivocally a basic human right.

The weekend.

It wasn’t always so. For most of human history, the toil of daily survival and commerce ground on mercilessly without fail. There was no stop. There were no weekends, or PTO, or rest from the grind. It was just as God poetically told Adam it would be after he and Eve ate the forbidden fruit:

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground…”
Genesis 3:17-19 (NIV)

And so, the painful toil had been going on for the ancient Hebrews all the days of their lives. As slaves in Egypt, they toiled seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, every year of their miserable existence in chains.

Then God showed up.

God introduced Himself to Moses, delivered them from Egypt, and is now instituting a fresh start with them. He is going to live with them at the center of their camp. He is going to teach them a new way of living in community with Him and with each other.

I’ve observed along my life journey that God gets generally characterized as a tyrannical killjoy. I’d like to refute that generalization by offering as Exhibit A today’s chapter. For the record, God has laid down plenty of rules to live by so far. The most repeated rules have been don’t commit child sacrifice and don’t have sex with your own family members. Other rules include don’t drive your daughter into prostitution. Then there’s If you’ve got a festering sore, you might want to spend some time in quarantine outside the camp. Oh my goodness, what a killjoy.

We get to today’s chapter and God demands of His people a series of festivals, celebrations, and it begins with A DAY OFF FROM WORK EVERY WEEK! A day of celebration and rest EVERY WEEK!

What a tyrant.

The “sabbath” was a radical social concept in 1500 B.C. Take a day off every week. Rest from your labor. Gather with your loved ones, your community, and with God. This pattern, by the way, had already been set when Father, Son, and Holy Spirit finished creation in six days and then took a day off to rest, celebrate, and enjoy what had been created. God is teaching His people to follow His own divine example.

But it doesn’t end with just a weekend day off. God goes on to establish annual festivals and celebrations for the whole nation to rest, gather, celebrate, mourn, and remember. Once again, NO WORK! There are eight in total when you break it down, which we’ve already learned in this chapter-a-day journey through Leviticus is an important metaphorical number. Seven is the number of completion (e.g. seven days of creation) and eight is a new beginning after the completion. So the annual festivals God ordains follow the flow of His peoples annual trip around the sun and then the beginning of a new one. God is teaching His people about the flow of life and time, and God is all about flow. It’s an essential part of who He is.

So, when we get to the end of the work week and say, “Thank God it’s Friday” we can take that literally. Sabbath was a particularly Hebrew tradition until the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, learned about God’s Sabbath and decreed that the entire Roman Empire would get one day off each week. With that, what became the modern weekend was born.

By the way, the two-day weekend would not be firmly established until the 1800s in the midst of the industrial revolution. This time it was the British Empire (which had become, and remains, the largest empire in human history) that became the source of the social change. While the additional day of rest evolved over time and the lobby for it came from a host of sources, church leaders were on the front line of the crusade arguing that having Saturdays off would lead to a refreshed workforce and higher church attendance on Sundays.

So, in the quiet on this Thursday morning as I approach the end of another work week, I find myself feeling grateful for God who by His very nature enjoys rest, celebration, gathering, and festivity. I’m consciously thankful for something I have always taken for granted. I am reminded once again that the God I encounter in the Great Story stands in contrast to the killjoy tyrant that others have perceived Him to be, often twisted by humanity’s own fundamentalist religious perversions of His intended guidelines for life.

Tomorrow morning, when my eyes open and I climb out of bed, I can truly, sincerely, and genuinely utter, “Thank you God. It’s Friday.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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Chapter-a-Day

Sabbath

June 30, 2020 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

“[The Sabbath] is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.“
Exodus 31:17 (NRSVCE)

One of the things that becomes really clear when you read through the Moses story is the emphasis that God placed on the idea of what’s called Sabbath. It’s one of God’s Top Ten rules and God keeps bringing it up, over and over again, and reminding the Hebrew people how important it is to knock off work every seven days. In concept, Sabbath is really pretty simple. The Creation story at the very start of Genesis describes God as having created the universe in six days. Then, on the seventh day, He took the day off and got some rest. Easy. Work six days, then take a day off. Get some rest. Be refreshed.

I have always scratched my head at what a sticking point Sabbath has been for people ever since. I mean, just a few weeks ago Grandma Vander Hart reminded me that God doesn’t want me mowing my lawn on Sunday, and she was quite serious. She also has a thing with tattoos, but that’s a post for another day.

When I grew up, my family were regular church attenders and sincere about God in a general sort of way. Going to church on Sunday was pretty much a given. We had rote prayers for family meals and bedtimes. During Christmas or Lent, mom might make us do the family devotion prescribed by our church which always felt a little awkward. The religious thing was always there, but it wasn’t a pervasive part of life. Sundays were always a restful day. After church mom usually made brunch, and then the rest of the day was spent chilling out. We kind of did Sabbath by default but nobody got uptight about it.

After becoming a follower of Jesus and becoming exposed to the traditions of other families and churches, I learned that this “Sabbath” thing was something certain churches and denominations took very seriously. Mothers prepared all of the Sunday meals on Saturday so they wouldn’t have to work. But that didn’t make sense because they still had to warm it up, serve it to the family, and clean up afterwards. So, I guess women still had to work, but less. I had friends tell me that they literally sat around in their living room with their family doing nothing. Some of them even had to be quiet. Maybe they got to read, but some couldn’t watch television because that meant you were making someone else work to entertain you and that was considered “conspiracy to commit Sabbath-breaking” in their religious code.

As I started to try and study and understand it, it got so confusing because the 7th day of the week was prescribed as the Sabbath. We read it again today! I knew my Jewish friends treated Saturday as “church day” but all the Christian churches I knew treated Sunday (which is the first day of the week) as the Sabbath day. When I asked about this I was told that when Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday, the Sabbath changed to Sunday in the Christian tradition, but I knew for a fact that wasn’t anywhere in the Bible. After the resurrection, there’s not one shred of evidence that Jesus said, “Hey boys, we’re going to make an official Sabbath switch.” In fact, the record states clearly that the Twelve continued to follow all of the Hebrew traditions. So, these same people who were being ultra-legalistic and literal about obeying the Sabbath weren’t literal or legalistic at all about obeying the Sabbath on the only day prescribed for the Sabbath in scripture!

Sabbath confusion and conflict has been around forever. It started with the Hebrews and Moses and it was still causing conflict when Jesus showed up. Jesus was perpetually hounded by the religious leaders about keeping the Sabbath. If Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath He got in trouble. If His disciples picked a fig off a tree as they were walking by He got in trouble. And each time it came up, Jesus brushed it off. In fact, He made a point of healing someone on the Sabbath just to make it clear to the religious fundamentalists when He said: “The Sabbath was made to help humans. Humans weren’t made to serve the Sabbath.”

And, in the quiet this morning I’m reminded that this was the point. The Hebrews in Moses’ day had been slaves for hundreds of years. They never got a day off. The concept of a day of rest was foreign to them. They were an agrarian people with farms and livestock, and it’s easy to become a workaholic when there are fields and animals that need constant tending. When you’re so focused on your work all the time, you have very little physical, mental, or spiritual energy left. It’s unhealthy on multiple levels. What did Jesus say were the two commands from which all the others flow?

Love God with everything you got. But if I’m working all the time then God ends up getting little or nothing from my depleted body, mind, and soul.
Love others as you love yourself. But, if I’m working all the time then I’m really not loving myself well, and everyone around me gets nothing of me but what meager leftovers of self I have left.

I’m also reminded of observing how the legalism and fundamentalism I experienced early in my spiritual journey created really sad, angry, and bitter people whose lives, and even their worship, appeared to me to be void of anything close to resembling peace, love, or joy. I observed that what it did create were people driven to keep up religious appearances in public while sneaking around doing what they shouldn’t in secret.

This is exactly what Jesus came to free us from. And Sabbath is a great foundational lesson. It’s easy. We each need regular rest, relaxation, and relationship with our fellow sojourners on life’s road. We need to stop work for a day and fill the life tank with a good meal, some meaningful conversation, playing together, laughing together, and sharing of life together. Sabbath is about lifting the burdens and the drudgery of everyday life, not adding to it.

And, speaking of Sabbath, it’s the 4th of July holiday weekend coming up here in the States. Wendy and I will be doing a little extended Sabbath, exactly as I just described, with a couple of other families who are dear friends. So, I’ll be taking a few days off of blogging.

I hope you experience some Sabbath, as well, my friend. And, experience it in the fullness of the way God always intended it. Cheers!

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

We Need More Festivals

August 22, 2016 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

Thus Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed festivals of the Lord.
Leviticus 23:44 (NRSV)

For going on nearly a century, our small Iowa town has held a Tulip Festival every May. Everything stops for three days as residents pour their time and energy into the tens of thousands of visitors who descend on our community. Make no mistake, the festival is all about promotion and commerce. It’s the major fundraiser of the year for most of our community organizations. Nevertheless, I think everyone in our town would agree that the festival is much more than that. It celebrates our history, our heritage, and it promotes a strong sense of community and a spirit of service within it.

Festival is just a fun word. From the Latin word for “feast,” the root word is defined as “cheerful and jovially celebratory.” Who doesn’t want that? That’s one of the reasons Wendy and I wanted to get married on New Year’s Eve. What a great evening to celebrate our lives and love through time.

I find it interesting that God would program into His people’s calendar a series of “festivals.” At the top of the list is the weekly day of Sabbath or rest. The weekly day of rest was supposed to be a festival, but over time the religious people turned it into its own version of burdensome religious toil. Jesus got more grief from religious leaders about breaking Sabbath rules than anything else He said or did. The uptight religious people had perverted a festival of rest into a weekly religious burden. That was never its intention and Jesus knew it.

I can’t say that the institutional church and Jesus’ followers have done much better with our weekly day of worship which was moved from the Jewish sabbath on Saturday to the day of Jesus’ resurrection on Sunday. Each Sunday is supposed to be a festival of resurrection, but I wouldn’t describe the weekly mood in many churches as “festive.”

I knew a family who decided to try and instill this understanding of Sunday being a festival of Jesus’ resurrection in their young children. They began early in the week looking in anticipation of Sunday as a special day of celebration. Every Saturday night (the eve of Resurrection Day) they had a special family meal that the children helped plan during the week. Guests were invited to join them. They decorated with bright colors and had special desserts. There was a large brass chandelier fixture in their dining room with long swooping arms. At the end of the weekly Resurrection Eve dinner all of the meal participants would stand with a party popper, point it at the chandelier and pull their popper so that the colorful streamers would hit the chandelier and get caught on the arms. There the streamers would stay so that each week day the children would see the colorful remnant of their weekly feast and look forward to the next.

The family celebrated getting to worship on Sunday and celebrate the Resurrection. They planned special moments together on Sunday as well. Believe me. The day I was a guest in their home, the children couldn’t wait for their weekly Saturday night and Sunday festival.

This morning I’m thinking about the fact that we don’t do more to make personal festivals a way to mark special days, seasons, heritage, and history that is meaningful to us and our loved ones. Festivals are fun as well as meaningful. Who doesn’t love a nice feast in which to be cheerful and jovially celebratory? Let’s plan a little festival and invite our loved ones.