Seasons and Sabbaths 2

Our livelihoods are dependent on our diligent work no matter what time we live in or what kind of work we do and anyone with any compassion will make exceptions to do the work needed to care for a life. But in most cases, as a culture, our work has become less dependent on seasons and we take no Sabbath. The lines are blurred. Work in our culture is 24/7. Sometimes we experience slow seasons and busy seasons. Sometimes we experience seasons of work and no work. With or without technological conveniences that make labor less tedious, the command to take a Sabbath remains as one of the Ten - the command to rest from all our work. It was Jesus who made a point to remind us that of course you rescue an animal that falls in a pit, even on the Sabbath. I guess my point is that it seems the lines of times and seasons, times for work and times for rest, keep getting more and more blurry - justified or not. The result is that the rhythm of work and rest gets lost in the shuffle even for children. Just yesterday I saw a book by Stanley Coren, Sleep Thieves. Haven't read it yet but I guess a serious lack of sleep is having a profound affect on our culture.

A child's life is divided into day and night, school and summer. Times and seasons. The season is determined by the sport or after school activity. Kids stay up past 8 pm if they haven't seen their parents all day. Kids have activities and commitments in the summer and over the holidays. We work 24/7. We need our kids cared for. We don't want them to be bored so why not maximize the time. We don't want to isolate them. We want them to have enough "socialization". Their lives are scheduled. That schedule isn't dependent on the weather except maybe a rained out game. Kids are going all the time. On one hand the lines of times and seasons, work and rest get blurred. On the other hand our lives and the lives of our children are very regimented and controled.

There are God-given seasons in life - natural life cycles and rhythms. Some of those seasons, life cycles and rhythms we have little control over. Seasons show up in the first chapter of Genesis. God also gives man dominion, though he had very little control over his environment at the time. In some ways we have greater ability to blur the lines of times and seasons, work and rest, than ever before because we're not so dependent on the outdoors. But there are still seasons when everything is going great and seasons when you think everything that matters to you is dying. Some of it we have control over and some we don't.