On Tuesday evening our sister Vera called Santy and me to break the sad news that her father had suddenly passed away.  She told us that just an hour prior, Benny, Vera’s husband, was still talking to her father over the phone.  After the phone conversation, Vera’s father went to a nearby store and while there, he collapsed.  Vera and Benny flew back to Jakarta last Thursday morning.  We’ll pray for them and their family as they are grieving their deep loss. 

For us Christians, death is like Sabbath.  The word literally means “stop” so, it is usually translated “rest.”  Sabbath, the seventh day of creation, became the concluding day, where God stopped His work of creating the universe therein.  Life unfolds just like the six days of God’s creative work.  It begins with Light and ends with Men.  The light is Jesus where through Him we see God’s love and salvation, and Men, God’s most precious creation, is the object of His love. In between Light and Men, God fills our life with many things.  That is life, isn’t it?  And in the end, we reach the final day of rest, Sabbath.

In his book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling has a chapter about rest and in it he shares his thought about Sabbath as “a day measured not by productivity but by relationship and worship,” to help us “remember and trust that life is given, not earned.”  So true, isn’t it?

Too often we think of being productive whenever we think about living, don’t we?  Sabbath reminds us that what’s truly important is relationship with others and worship to God, not productivity.  And that is what we must fill our life with: Relationship and Worship. 

Sabbath also serves as a reminder that life is given, not earned. We reach the seventh day because of God’s creative act; it is He who gives us the rest of the week and now it is He who gives us the rest. One day we’ll reach the Sabbath day, the day of rest from our labor. 

Pastor Paul