Finding Time for God in a Busy World

From my friend, Lenny Cacchio,

If God created the world in six days and the man and the woman on the sixth of those days, it is instructive that God’s next act was to take a break. After the busy-ness of creating and the joy of bringing to life two creatures made in his own image, God could have told them to get to work. Instead, he stopped and took time to build something more important than the dressing and keeping of his garden. He took a break so they could get to know each other.

I fear sometimes that in our 21st Century lives we spend so much time doing that we forget about being. For many of us who have children, activities and responsibilities have taken over our lives, and we find ourselves chauffeuring from here to there almost every night of the week, sometimes trying to be in too many places at the same time. Add in the responsibilities of earning a living and serving in various volunteer capacities, and it is no wonder that so many of us lack the time to spend with our Creator. That’s a shame, and I am convinced God thinks so too. While he did intend us to be doers (that is, to accomplish things), he also intended us to be relational beings. Man was put on the earth to dress it and keep it, but he was incomplete without a soul mate with whom to share it. And the first thing God did after putting the man and the woman together was to give them time off to allow them to get to know each other – and Him -- better.

The Commandment says to work six days, and that’s a big part of the command – work, and do, and accomplish, for that is a part of our mandate. It also commands us to take a break, for we are more than workers -- we are beings, beings born for relationships. Once a week it makes sense to stop as God did, to cease from our physical work and the busy-ness of our lives, and to nurture the eternal relationships of friends, family, and God. The idea of a Sabbath rest reminds us that this world and all the things in it will pass away, but the relationships we build will last forever.

The world does its best to cause us to forget that. We are tempted to focus on the now rather than on eternity, and that can too easily succumb to the slavery of busy-ness if we have no time to reflect on the larger matters. It is accurate to say that our world can rob us of our personhood and make us slaves to its demands.

It is curious that the Fourth Commandment attaches itself to a rationale that addresses the issue of slavery: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work. … remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you there by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” (Deuteronomy 5:13-15)

Anybody who believes that the Sabbath is bondage needs to read again the above passage. We were given the Sabbath to remind us that slaves don’t get a day off. It is a commemoration of freedom, which is one of the great gifts that God intends all to have. He gave the Sabbath day to show that we are not slaves, and by claiming that day, we are claiming the freedom we have in Christ and our God-given right to build our relationships rather than our earthly empires.

Lenny Cacchio