The Seventh Day - Moses 3:1-2, Abraham 5:1-4, genesis 2:1-3

I’m listening to an excellent lecture series on the book of Genesis by a Rutgers professor of Jewish Studies. There are a lot things that he says that really give perspective to the ancient world that Genesis was written, some I’m not so sure about but it will be interesting to talk about as we go through the material. It’s been hard not being able to write as frequently as I used to, work has been really busy and I’ve had several things come up that have required a lot of my time and attention, but I’m going to try to make more of an effort to make time, and that might mean taking smaller chunks of the scriptures per day. After creating the earth, the plants, the animals, the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve, “on the seventh day I, God, ended my work, and all things which I had made; and I rested on the seventh day from all my work… and I, God, blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it I had rested from all my work which I, god, had created and made.” Resting on the Sabbath is an interesting concept especially considering that I’ve worked Sundays for many years as an adult, but what is unusual about that is that I’ve almost never had to miss church because of my work. I work in a hospital so patients don’t magically get cured Saturday night and get sick again Monday morning, so there has to be care, but how do you keep the Sabbath day holy and work at the same time? I think it’s totally possible to respect and observe the Sabbath while working the whole day, and it’s also possible to disrespect and break the Sabbath when you don’t work or do anything “bad,” the whole day, it’s a state of mind. I’m not saying that I’m the best at it, sometimes when I’m on call and I get called in one too many times, I’ll stop by El Pollo Loco on the way home and get food for my kids. Both my kids are inactive now and they want to go shopping and stuff on Sunday, so what I’ve started telling them is “I don’t shop on Sunday if I can avoid it.” I’ve started to try to get my gas on Saturday, and all that, but what’s the point? Is the whole purpose to avoid buying things, then it turns Pharisaic in that you end up focusing on the money and not the Savior. The IM quotes Dallin H. Oaks as teaching, “The Sabbath was blessed and sanctified as a holy day, a day of rest. But this sanctification and commandment of rest was for a purpose- not that man should refrain from work in order to pursue his own pleasure, but that man should serve God and worship him… President Spencer W. Kimball put our teaching on Sabbath observance in a nutshell when he suggested that we ‘measure each Sabbath activity by the yardstick of worshipfulness.’” What do I think God did on his day of rest? That’s a good question. He probably visited with people, checked to see how everyone was doing, taught some lessons, focused on spirituality. How am I going to incorporate this more into my own life? I’m going to have to think about that.