There are few things that I do not like in this world, and one of those things is sleep. While I do believe that the body needs rest, I think of so many things that could do with the 8 or so hours I a lot myself for sleep each night. When I was in college sometimes I would go so far as to drink strong coffee or take caffeine pills to try and stay awake but the end result was that I would get too burnt out and my work would have little value, so now I have learned to get a good nights rest. God loves us and there is reason for the sabbath. It not just to sit around and waist time worshipping God. God actually loves you and wants to spend time with you. Whether you like the life you have or not God gave you your life as a gift. Everything in your life is a gift from God. And like anyone that loves, they too want to loved in return. God asks that we take the sabbath to commune with him, love him and worship him because he loves you and he wants the love and respect that he deserves. He wants you to observe the sabbath to rest so that you body and mind can recharge and rebuild for the week to come. He wants you to spend time with your family worshiping and loving him and each other so that your family will be and remain righteous and strong. By no means though does God want you to ignore your fellow man in need just because of the sabbath. God sent his son Jesus to teach us how to love and that we should be ready to love at all times, and never should we follow a tradition so blindly that we forget the reason for the tradition in the first place. For the one tradition that God does call us to each and every day is to love and to love with all the might that we can muster. For when we can learn to love God and everyone around us with all our might we will find true peace and true rest on this earth.
John 5:1-16
1After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Beth-za'tha, which has five porticoes. 3In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed. 5One man was there, who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" 7The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me." 8Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your pallet, and walk." 9And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked. Now that day was the sabbath. 10So the Jews said to the man who was cured, "It is the sabbath, it is not lawful for you to carry your pallet." 11But he answered them, "The man who healed me said to me, `Take up your pallet, and walk.'" 12They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, `Take up your pallet, and walk'?" 13Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, "See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you." 15The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16And this was why the Jews persecuted Jesus, because he did this on the sabbath.
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