Busyness is the new black. It’s stylish. We spend an inordinate amount of time comparing how busy we are with everyone else. We compare our schedules, our kid’s schedules, how productive we are and how much we have because of it to everyone around us. And if we don’t do or have what the next guy does or has, we just get busier and produce more so that we can.
This consumes our conversations and thoughts. And this should give us pause: Who is consuming whom, here? Are we the consumer or are we those consumed? It’s no accident that our adversary the devil is described as a lion prowling around seeking to devour us, to consume us. He gives us the liturgy of this world, the liturgy of productivity and consumption. For if he can keep us busy in “muchness” and “manyness,” he can be satisfied.
And this is why the Lord, after finishing all His work of creation, rested on the seventh day. This is why He established the Sabbath day—to give His people rest from all their work. As they rested, He continued to work for them, to satisfy them, to fill them with His gifts—food from heaven by His Word and Promise.
That day came when from our Lord’s cross and in His death, He proclaimed, “It is finished” (John 19:30). And so His work of redemption was complete. And so His body rested in the tomb, the belly of the earth. Though He is the Lord God who always works, yet as the Lord rested on the original Sabbath, now Jesus kept the Sabbath by resting in the tomb and rising from the dead to live forever. For this is why He came. This is why He became man: to draw all to Himself so that He could give rest and refreshment to the weary and the heavy laden.
The Sabbath is a gift, not a burden. It is a gift of time free from the liturgy of this world, the liturgy of productivity and consumption. Sabbath is time for rest and refreshment, a time free from anxiety to enjoy the gifts God gives, all of them—His Word, His Promises, His Sacraments, His creation, everything. It is a foretaste of the rest we shall enjoy in heaven.
Sadly for many of us rest has become work. It’s become drudgery. We long for it but we aren’t able to do it because there’s so much to be done and so little time to do it. But really what’s the rush? Why are we so hurried and harried? Have we forgotten that Jesus is raised from the dead and lives forever?
Sabbath is God’s gift of time free from all of the anxiety and hurry of this world so that we can rest, be refreshed by the gifts God gives. Society won’t do it for us. They are addicted to the liturgy of productivity and consumption. Though we are in the world, we are not of it. We are the people of God, His own children by water and Word, joined to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus lives. And so shall we. So rest in the promise of our Savior that sin, death, and time have not hold on you because Jesus is raised from the dead. Jesus lives. And so shall we, forever.