| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “How to inhabit time” Our Bible verse for today: “Be very careful then how you live, not as unwise but as wise.” Ephesians 5:15 (NIV) Our thought for today: “Have we lost our balance? ” Back in the mid-1980s the Japanese realized they had a social problem that had morphed into a major health crisis. Their culture placed such high value on hard work and high achievement that the Japanese people were literally working themselves to death. They were actually dropping dead at work. Lots of them. Tens of thousands a year. Others were dying early from health issues that were related to overworking, including hypertension and heart disease, along with suicide. They even coined a phrase to describe the crisis, “Karoshi” – death by overworking. Karoshi is still at crisis levels in Japan today. It’s a problem in our nation too. Many of us literally work ourselves to death. But our society is also noted for going to the other extreme. We’re fanatical about leisure and recreation, to the point that many of us put as much effort into our play as we do into our work. How many times have you come home from a vacation feeling like you needed a vacation to rest from your vacation? For others their leisure involves little activity at all and therefore they’ve become sedentary, lazy, and dangerously out of shape. Houston, we have a problem. We’ve lost our balance. We’re addicted to work, or to leisure, or to both. As Christians when we get caught-up in that it often results in neglecting God for the sake of work or play or both. This is why God has given us a Sabbath day. And this is why He has commanded us (fourth of the Ten Commandments) to observe it. We are to have a day each week to stop all the work and all the busyness, and to instead rest and worship. It’s not optional. God has commanded it. But … we make excuses. We go here, we go there, we go everywhere instead of going to church. We work the extra hours, we do the other things, we make endless excuses, and we are busy, busy, busy – with everything except God and His people. As was noted in a previous devotional in this series, church attendance in America is at an all-time low, even among professing Christians. In Ephesians 5:15 Paul cautioned us to be wise rather than unwise in how we live. Many of us are living unwisely because we’ve lost a healthy balance in life. The Sabbath was intended by God to help us restore the balance. Please stop sacrificing your Sabbath on the altar of other things. Today is Friday, Sunday is coming. You really do need that Sabbath day. God bless, Pastor Jim |
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