Last weekend at Deeper Still Louisville, Priscilla Shirer taught from Deuteronomy 5:12-15:
“Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. 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 male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.”
Priscilla pointed out that even when the Israelites were on the way to Canaan and had been freed from slavery to the Egyptians, they still had a slave mentality. They didn’t trust the Lord’s provision. She went on to say that, if we’re honest, the same can be said of us.
We all have a tendency to “overdo” in certain parts of our lives. Priscilla mentioned that it might be work, food, accumulating stuff – and it could even be teaching Bible study or volunteering. It could be over-scheduling our children. It could be striving so hard to be a “perfect” wife and mother that we actually miss opportunities to hang out with our families.
We are a culture that values busy-ness more than we value rest, so we overcommit and overwork and overspend and overeat and over-all-sorts-of-other-things. The problem with that, as Priscilla said, is that anything outside of the context in which it was meant to be enjoyed can enslaveus.
And when something enslaves us? It becomes a counterfeit. It may look like a good thing on the outside, but when you dig deep into how that particular hobby or job or behavior pattern is affecting your life, it doesn’t really bear any fruit.
It just becomes one more load to bear.
We’ll pick up with part two of Priscilla’s message tomorrow and share how Scripture instructs us to make room for margin in our lives, for Shabbat, but in the meantime, consider this question that Priscilla asked the people at Deeper Still:
What is it that you’re overdoing in your life? Is there some good thing in your life that seems to have overtaken you?
To be continued…