Keeping the Sabbath

This morning I had to keep reminding myself that today's Sunday…imagine me chanting, “Today's Sunday. Today's Sunday,”...because we've been partying since Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Tuesday, I blocked out my calendar. I was doing a lot of prep work. Pre-making food, cleaning the house. The last few days, it's hard to figure out even what day it is because all those days were out of the ordinary. Yesterday I thought it was Monday. We'd already had a couple of days of putting up the Christmas decorations, shopping, and stuff that I would normally reserve for the weekend for Saturday. So I kept having to tell myself, today's Friday, today's Saturday, today's Sunday. This morning was today's Sunday. REMEMBER today's Sunday! 

I got up. I was trying to figure out what to wear. Duh, of course, I'm going to wear a dress because today's Sunday. I'm going to church. That's your daily dose of inspiration and encouragement…even though the rest of the week has maybe been a little bit crazy, remember today’s Sunday. We don't normally have people over for a big feast on Thursday and put up Christmas decorations or taking advantage of some Black Friday sales or whatever. These are things that only come around once a year. We can get thrown off of our normal feeling of flow. We get out of our flow. It's a good thing! These are all great pattern interrupts that allow us to connect with people, have some fun times, create memories, and eat good food. We look forward to this time of year all year long. It is something that we want to have. It's great to get recalibrated after the pattern interrupt. We think we can get caught up from Thanksgiving. But now we're into the Christmas season, where there's lots of stuff to do that is out of the norm. 

This whole month we're not quite back to the predictable flow. We will do the same thing…planning, shopping, entertaining, cooking up a storm and eating with gusto. We're going to be doing things that are out of our normal flow. These are all really good things. It's not bad to be out of flow, pattern interrupts keep life interesting. Just know there are going to be interruptions, different and new activities that we're not used to doing. 

Sunday is the day that God gave us as a gift to rest, recalibrate. That's what I invite you to do today…what I'm doing this myself. I'm inviting you to rest and recalibrate. I found myself this morning making a list of things that are weekday tasks. I was like, “wait, no, today's Sunday, today's the Sabbath. I don't do this type of stuff on the Sabbath. I do other things on the Sabbath.” 

Sunday is the natural pattern interrupt for the week. Sunday interrupts the flow of the week. It’s all good. It takes us out of our flow. It is the time for us to rest, get out of that flow of the week to be in a totally different space with God partnering with Him. Maybe we give some time to planning the next week with Him. Sunday wasn’t meant as a day to keep plowing through with our head down in our list of to-dos. We let that go for today and allow ourselves to rest in the Lord…recalibrate. 

So that we're aware of what day it is, the exercise that came to me to do today was to read the Christmas story in the Bible. When I wrote this, I shifted from Thanksgiving into Christmas mode. That story is timeless and doesn’t need to be limited to Christmastime. Reading the story of our Savior’s birth is the perfect way to recalibrate what's important. I looked it up, it's Luke chapters 1 and 2. Also Matthew chapters 1 and 2. Typically, we go to Luke, but Matthew also has some really great information about the birth of Christ. I'm going to read both of those passages today and see what I can learn. I want to see what new insights I can receive by comparing the two gospels, the two versions of the story while having my own heart and mind open instead of assuming that I know the Christmas story. Of course, I can tell it, but I can't repeat it verbatim. I know that there's something that I will be able to learn from reading the Christmas story today on the Sabbath, resting in the Lord, recalibrating, getting re-centered in Christ and His wonderful mission that He came here for. The birth was the event that started the ball rolling for everything that He accomplished here and what He is still doing for us. 

I invite you each Sabbath to choose activities that make it obvious to you and everybody around you, that today is the Sabbath. This is the day to interrupt the flow of our worldly activities to rest, recalibrate and re-center in Christ. Only after a pattern interrupt can we be ready for the next week (and the Christmas season) with the untold situations we may find ourselves in. 

My new insights from reading the Christmas story:

I learned several new things from studying the story of Christ's birth in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 today. Unfortunately, there was too much to share everything, so I am just going to share one of my aha's:

The reason Matthew and Luke recorded the Christmas Story was more than a record of events for us to know how Christ came into the world. Both prophets recorded it to prove Christ's royalty by man's standards and by God's.

Luke 1:1-4 is a preamble to the chapter, written by Luke because many (not just Matthew and Luke) had written of the events leading up to Jesus' birth. Apparently some were straying from the facts and Luke wanted to write to make sure everyone knew the truth according to eyewitnesses who were also godly men, and according to his (Luke’s) own perfect understanding of all things from the very first.

Then Luke starts his story at least 6 months before Jesus was born, to give an account of miraculous events leading up to Jesus' birth. And continues to give other miraculous events like dreams that allowed the parents and the wise men to protect the child (Luke 2:12 and Luke 2:13) and to protect the mother (Joseph could have had Mary killed as a public example of infidelity -Matthew 1:19). Miracles like Mary's cousin conceiving in her old age after being barren for decades, and her husband becoming mute for disbelieving and then receiving his voice just in time to name his son. (-Luke 1:18-19, 24)

Luke sites all this for the sole purpose of giving credibility to the one main miraculous event of Mary's conception. To prove that with God, nothing is impossible and therefore God literally is Jesus' father. (heavenly royalty) (-Luke 1:36-37)

Luke tells of John the Baptist, that went before to prepare the people to receive Jesus, just as a messenger goes before royalty to herald a king's visit (earthly royalty) -Luke 1

Matthew 1, verses 1, 6 and 17

The Hebrew number 14 signifies royalty. He is in the line of royalty through King David (earthly royal lineage)

Matthew 1, verses 16 and 18-25

Matthew makes it really clear that Joseph was the husband but not the father of Jesus and that Mary was a virgin. He references the prophecy that said a virgin would bring forth a son who would be a god living among the people (heavenly royal lineage).