That's completely backwards

I have a favorite thing about God.  It's that His laws and the way He set His kingdom up to work are at complete odds with intuition.

Give and it will be given to you. (Lk 6:38)
If someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.  (Mt. 5:39)
If someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.  (Mt 5:40)
Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops. (Prvbs. 3:9)
A generous man will prosper.  He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed.  (Prvbs. 11:25)
Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing. (I Peter 3:9)

Of course, this list could go on and on but you get the picture.  Those are backwards.  They don't flow with how we'd think we should live life.  That's why it's awesome to me that God set things up this way - it's exciting!  If the verse said "A person who works 95 hours a week will prosper" how exciting would that be?  There'd be no mystery in it - no faith.  There'd be no way of knowing if God showed up in that situation or if it was just the 95 hours of work that did the trick.

I think the Sabbath falls into the same category.  We're busy.  Everyone is.  So it goes against the natural grain of living to completely take a day off of working.  But in my short experience of trying to observe the Sabbath I can tell you that God shows up.

I am still evolving in my thoughts on how the Sabbath should work over here and also praying for wisdom when it comes to entertaining on the weekend or serving in the Saturday service at church.  My current goals are: no cooking, cleaning or laundry on the Sabbath.  I will update more in this blog about how I'm accomplishing that but I will end with this:

In prepping for the Sabbath I needed to go grocery shopping tonight.  It was a long day and I didn't get out the door until 9:30.  Pre-Sabbath keeping I would've left it until tomorrow morning and went with the kids (yikes!)  But tomorrow morning I will need to be cooking and so I pushed myself to go so we could honor the Sabbath this weekend.  I have NEVER (no exaggeration) gotten in and out of Meijer in less than 90 minutes (and it usually takes longer).  Tonight it only took 1 hour - and I was on the phone with my brother the whole time.  God blessed the work of my hands.

We are still in a learning curve over here when it comes to Sabbath keeping.  Last week didn't go so well.  This weekend we are playing in the band at church which includes practice and a service on Saturday.  At this point I would say that's ok but I am loving learning more about the Sabbath as we go and waiting to see how God will show up as we follow His "backwards" way :).

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Yay, God!