Enjoying Sabbath

On Mondays (for the last several weeks) I try and read through a chapter of Mark Buchanan's The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul By Restoring Your Sabbath.

It's been a way to keep getting Sabbath into me, so I can live more out of rest and rhythm than rat race.

This struck me this morning.

Buchanan says:

It's killing us, our worry, our hurry, our need to gather one more armload of brushwood (see Num. 15), our haste to get out of the heart doctor's office and back to the fast food and fast lane. We take our rat poison to thin our blood and scurry back to the rat race to clot our blood some more. The death verdict is inscribed in this way of life.

And then he quotes Isaiah 58:13-14 (this was from The Message, read the NIV here)

"If you watch your step on the Sabbath
and don't use my holy day for personal advantage,
If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy,
God's holy day as a celebration,
If you honor it by refusing 'business as usual,'
making money, running here and there—
Then you'll be free to enjoy God!
Oh, I'll make you ride high and soar above it all.
I'll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob."
Yes! God says so!

Tell me this doesn't give you a better way to live. It's not easy to choose this way, but when you compare, there doesn't even seem to be a choice. I have lots to learn, that's why I remind myself of Sabbath more often.