Early in life I had a traumatic experience with a beautiful girl who became my fiancé. I was head over heels in love with her and ready to get married, but then I found out that when I went out of town for a week, she attended a party and before the night was over she ended up hopping into bed with five different men including my own brother. As one might imagine this had a negative effect on my ability to trust women.
My wife and I have been married for over forty years and she has never done anything to give me any reason to think she might not be 100% faithful to me, until now. No, she did not fall head over heels in love with a tall handsome stranger or even a short ugly one; she has abandoned me over the brand new I-Pad that I recently gave her for her birthday.
Her affair began innocently enough by playing Solitaire on it every now and then, but then it grew into an obsession where she played for hours at a time foregoing little things like preparing meals for her starving husband. Then it took another cruel turn and she downloaded a book from the Internet. She would read far into the night and when she got up, she’d stagger into the living room curtly nod and grunt a half hearted good morning to me as she poured herself a cup of coffee that “I” had to make. Then she slumped into her easy chair and resumed reading.
Gone are the days of having a sumptuous breakfast; gone are the days of lively conversation; gone are the days of cheerful banter among two lifelong friends. My days are now sadly spent watching my wife sit in her pajamas staring into the eye of an evil beast.
My wife has dumped me for a computer.
Damn you Steve Jobs and Apple Computers.
Hmmm… I decided that I wasn’t going to give up on forty years of marriage, (and home cooked delicious meals), that easily. Drastic action was needed, and I decided that intervention was my only hope. I have hidden the battery charger to her I-Pad. At the rate that she uses that device I calculate that it will no doubt be dead as a hammer by this morning and I am confident that perhaps as early as today she will resume making and delivering my morning cup of coffee with that warm smile that I have grown to love. It will be bacon, eggs, grits, Honey Lake honey and plum jelly on toast for breakfast in about an hour. Happy days will be here again.
Folks I realize that this was drastic action, but I want my old life back.
Over the weekend I had a long conversation with a couple of friends of mine. These guys work brutally long hours in a frenetic atmosphere literally seven days per week. I believe it is hurting, rather than helping their health and privately owned business and I had an intervention with them and told them they were making a huge mistake.
God has made it explicitly clear that we are to rest one day per week. The first example was after the creation and God told us that He rested on the seventh day in the very first book of the Bible. He did this to set an example for us. For those of us who are too dense to pick up on His subtle example, God explicitly commanded that we follow His lead in His most Holy edict, the Ten Commandments. God gave additional examples throughout the Bible and He even ordained to the Jews that the land must be allowed to rest on the seventh year and oxen and beasts of burden should be well fed and allowed to rest. My friends God created us, this world, and everything in it and He has declared that we are to set aside one day per week to rest and worship Him.
At this point I am compelled to note that we are not to take this notion to the extreme. I have observed that some who tend to vote with the Democratic Party have taken this too far and interpreted it to mean we should rest seven days per week and never work.
That’s bad too.
Remember God’s example, He worked six days and rested only one day.
The manufacturers of portable computer devices plainly tell users in their owner’s manuals that the batteries of those damnable devices must be rested and recharged in order to work. Most people realize what will happen if they do not recharge their device; it will die. They willingly rest and recharge their device in order to avoid its death. Selah… (Stop and rest and meditate on this for a moment.)
Isn’t it odd how we seem to listen to a human owner’s manual, but ignore God’s owner’s manual the Holy Bible? For those who don’t believe the Bible, Google this subject and you will find new reports, written by humans no less, who have recently come out and clearly confirmed what God already told us thousands of years ago, that physically, we need one day of rest per week in order to stay healthy!
But there is one thing of which we can be assured; God didn’t give us the Sabbath just for physical rest, but also as a day we could spend with Him, away from the cares and worries of everyday life. In Mark 2 it states:.’The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Now the way I interpret this is that God has created and given us the Sabbath as a gift. He has set aside one day where we can rest, meditate, pray, sing songs of praise, fellowship with other believers, and spend quality time with the best Father anyone could ever want. We need to spend this time together, and then take a long nap after one of those fabulous home cooked plantation style meals with garden raised tomatoes, fresh corn, green beans, new potatoes, and roast beef.
Note in the verse below how God emphasizes the word seven. It appears three times. Satan does not want us to rest or observe the Sabbath and spend quality time with our Father. He wants to destroy us.
Don’t let him.
Do it! Do it! Do it!
Genesis 2:2
And on the seventh day God ended his work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all his work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all his work which God created and made.