Luxury. . .

While it is tempting to consider luxury in terms of what you have, there is another way of looking at this thing.  Luxury is also in what you have not.  In the riches of a world where nearly everyone has a smart phone and lives, to one degree or another by the screen, luxury may well be turning off the phone and making dark the ever present screen and its light.  In a world replete with information and, indeed, on overload with the abundance of it all, could luxury be silencing the ever present push of what is new or what is happening a world away in order to curl up in a comfy chair with a good book?  In a life defined by the press to be entertained and the pursuit of the newest and latest entertainment, is might be that luxury is taking rest, ending the cycle of pleasure seeking if only for a little while. 

In this respect, the Sabbath of God's own creation was a tremendous gift and blessing.  It was the gift of luxury in a world demanding labor and tempting with distraction to the point of losing one's own soul.  God knew this even though we are still trying to figure it out.  He created six days for labor (even the labor in pursuit of happiness) and insisted that for one day, rest would be the focus.  It was then as it is now an extravagant gift of largess to release us not simply from work but from the ordinary pursuits that become their own labor.  Of course, we have disowned His gift and restored to the Sabbath the same burdens placed upon the rest of the week.  Even on this day of days we are still wondering "what are we going to do now?"

It has become popular.  Charlie Kirk argued for something like Sabbath keeping and rest in his book “Stop in the Name of God.” Even the noted spiritual authority President Trump has encouraged Americans to embrace a “national Sabbath” and invite “friends, families, and communities of all backgrounds” to step back from their devices for a day of gratitude and rest.  Perhaps the good President might well take his own advice and put down his tweeting fingers more often.  Were they serious?  I think so.  They do not have to be sage oracles of wisdom to figure out that too much is worse than too little when it comes to the things that cross the crowded paths of our lives.  For world in perpetual insomnia and dependent upon sleep aids, it would be logical that we need to rediscover the idea of rest and learn again to call it a gift of God and a luxurious one at that.

I read how many folks actually are turning to a flip phone so that it is for calls and not for everything else from business to entertainment.  The small screen and its larger cousins are as demanding upon us as they are blessing and we forget that they are to be ruled by us instead of ordering us and our lives.  This is also the meaning of Sabbath.  Ordering our lives deliberately and within the rhythm God created and created for us, in particular.  No one but an idiot would believe that we will go back to a legalized fast from business as was in the past but perhaps we should all learn to simply say no for a little while, anyway.

Some weeks ago when our internet had been down for a couple of days, I called for repair and was informed that the fixit guy would show up at 11am on a Sunday morning.   Since we had been suffering with its outage as well as paying for it all in the reliable bill for services, I welcomed his coming until, when that Sunday arrived, I suddenly felt the disconnect of having the internet restored on a day in which Christians focus upon the Lord, the day of His resurrection having granted us another version of a Sabbath, so to speak.  It was embarrassing that on this way when we were planning to do not much at all, we required a man to work so that we would no longer be unplugged from it all.  Ouch.  At least we did not miss Church!