Five minutes before the Titanic struck an iceberg, how many people on board do you imagine were praying? No time for prayer; they were too busy having fun. Five minutes after the iceberg was struck, how many people on board do you think were praying? No time for prayer; they were too busy trying to save themselves. Fast forward a few hours and imagine a small group of shivering passengers huddled together in a small lifeboat in the frigid north Atlantic, how many people do you think were praying? When we humans become painfully aware that we need to be saved, only then do we seek God’s help.
God so loved his people that he scheduled a time for prayer in their weekly calendar. He knew that they would be so busy with the affairs of life that they would forget about their need to be saved. It was his plan that when disaster struck, his people would be so used to spending time with him, and would instinctively turn to him in prayer. This was the amazing gift of the sabbath. It was a day set aside to be with God and enjoy his love; it was a taste of what life in heaven would be like if the people remained faithful to their covenant with God. It was a vivid reminder that there is so much more to life than working, having fun and trying to eke out a living. Some, however, made even the sabbath just another day of the week (Mark 2:23-28).
“As Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the sabbath, his disciples began to make a path while picking the heads of grain. At this the Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?’”
Jesus and his disciples were enjoying a foretaste of heaven, being with God and with one another—a foretaste of what the eternal sabbath would be like. What about the Pharisees? Were they enjoying this special day of holiness or were they busy with their spiritual magnifying glasses trying to police the community? Were they savoring God’s love or were they using the sabbath to further their own purposes? Aha! Constructing paths in the fields and reaping grain were forms of work. Now they caught Jesus in the act of violating their terms of sabbath observance! This helped “prove” for them that Jesus was an imposter.
Jesus told them:
“The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”
Weaving a day of prayerful rest into their lives, God helped the people keep the perspective of heaven before them. The sabbath helped them yearn for the day when they would be with him. The sabbath was not meant to be an opportunity for the religious lawmakers to create and enforce new rules and regulations on an already-overburdened people. Jesus made it clear that he was the one who set up the rules for sabbath observance.
Back to the Titanic. We seem to be in pre-iceberg times As people enjoying the comforts of life, we do not see the need to be saved. Having carved out our own “heaven on earth,” do we see the need to set aside a day a week to spend with God? Haven’t we, like the Pharisees, become our own “lords of the Sabbath,” defining our own rules? Now is the time to build sabbath into our everyday lives before the iceberg suddenly strikes the ship of our culture.
