A young fighter pilot believed he didn’t require an oxygen mask up to twenty thousand feet. He could function just fine without it, thank you. His superiors decided to show him. They placed him in a low-oxygen chamber that simulated air at twenty thousand feet. After a few minutes, they asked him to write his full name, address, family’s address, family’s names, social security number and phone number on a pad of paper.

Upon exiting, the pilot grinned. He felt fine — no problem. Then he looked at what he had written and stared. The last three items were total gibberish — incomprehensible scrawling. He hadn’t known his state at all. Like the pilot, we function each week in rarefied, depleted air. Often, we don’t realize our true condition. The life-giving oxygen masks of prayer, the Bible and Sabbath enable us to legibly live God’s love.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” – Exodus 20:8-11

Bombarded by amusements, we lose time for deepening, thoughtful reflection. In a famous passage about withdrawing to Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Of course, in the woods Thoreau didn’t have to deal with a spouse, children, a demanding job and a million pleasures in a culture based on expediency. With all our responsibilities, how can we leave and do what Thoreau did?

“They must realize that the Sabbath is the Lord’s gift to you.” – Exodus 16:29

Sabbath is our “Walden Pond.” Each week we can clear our minds, like rinsing a brush after painting, because we know the next job won’t be as good if we don’t clean our tools thoroughly. The Sabbath enables us to live deliberately and face the “essential facts of life.” Sabbath brings us back to grace, delight and life.

Article from CREATION Life Bible Exploration