Now, Apartment Therapy probably isn’t the first place you look to find insight into God’s design and his intent for Creation. But just a few weeks ago, a writer at that magazine described going through her late grandmother’s possessions and was surprised by how many candleholders her grandmother had owned.
These were no ordinary candleholders. They were for Shabbat, Hebrew for “Sabbath.” On a Friday afternoon, after looking at her grandmother’s menorah and other Jewish art, the writer lit the candles, and, for the first time in quite a while, observed Shabbat.
What followed for her was a rediscovery – actually, in her case, a discovery – of the wisdom and the blessings associated with keeping the Sabbath, or, as she puts it, “[setting] clear boundaries between work and non-work time,” not to mention the opportunities for rest and reflection that it brought. Thanks to her Jewish heritage, this author discovered one of the most important things that we’ve lost as a society – the ordinances that God wrote into Creation, such as the Sabbath.
Trying to live while ignoring these ordinances is trying to live while ignoring gravity.
You might pull it off for a while, but eventually you’ll come crashing back down to earth. Now, if you doubt the importance of Sabbath, just run a quick Google search for terms like “exhaustion” or “burnout” or the various mental disorders that accompany the habits of our society. This is what crashing back down to earth looks like for a society. It’s a recurring blight on our culture.