What's a Sabbath?

Yesterday I started pondering the idea of a weekly "sabbath" with the self-convicting question of whether two half-sabbaths (a few hours on Saturday, a few hours on Sunday) could "count" as a sabbath day -- bearing in mind that the Sabbath was created not for God but for us (Mark 2:27).

Long story short, I don't think ".5 + .5 = 1" will cut it.

This morning, a friend of mine reminded me that the original Jewish Sabbath "day" was defined as sundown to sundown.

Hmmm.

Sundown on Saturday to sundown on Sunday wouldn't help get past the work involved in administration of our Adult Sunday School (which is the thing that keeps Sundays from being as "restful" as they might be otherwise)... but sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday just might work.

That only makes sense when a "sabbath" is defined not as a legalistic absence of any sort of labor or exertion and is taken instead as a focus on personal renewal. The deciding question could (should? might?) be "Will I draw energy from this activity or will it drain me?"

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