Sunday’s Blessing – 06/15/2025 – Father’s Day
The past month or so I spent time writing about the sabbath/selah/rest of God. I’ve learned a lot as I spent time reading and meditating on what God thinks about the sabbath from both the Old and New Testament perspectives. I came to realize they are exactly the same. There are two different things here. There is The Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week, and considered to be a weekly festival which God gave His chosen people, the Jews, for them to remember all God had done for them.
There is also simply sabbath. This is a time when we “suspend” our activity and just commune with our Father. This is not relegated to a day of the week. It is not church attendance. It is not the fourth commandment. It is a time when we let everything else go for a while and spend that time talking and listening to God. The word meaning of sabbath is: intermission, to cease, to rest. In today’s vernacular it might be: “time out” or “chill”.
King David understood sabbath and built into his psalms a pause, called selah, which mean: “suspension” or “pause”. This nuance in musical terms could mean an actual suspended chord or progression of sound. Our minds hear the musical suspension and naturally begin anticipating the resolution; the resolve.
When I saw this, I immediately understood why sabbath means so much to God. In essence, sabbath is faith. When we suspend our efforts, our plans, our purposes, our pursuits, we experience sabbath rest. There’s no struggle or strain. We come to realize that God is the source of everything we need. This is faith: the essence of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. This suspension brings the anticipation of the resolution or resolve in our life.
The resolve leads us to act, not in faith, but in trust. We heard from the Father in the sabbath moment, then go from there trusting in what we heard from Him. This is how we live our life-song. We play and sing the words and melody given to us by the Holy Spirit. It builds up to a point of suspension where we have to pause and seek counsel from the Maker, then continue in the cadence, trusting God’s voice.
Now for today’s blessing:
May the Lord teach you to play your life-songTo bring glory and honor to Christ and His KingdomSo those in your world can be blessedIncluding you, the minstrel and soloist of your lifeMay you encounter the Father on this Father’s DayAs you learn of Him through the renewed fellowship available through ChristTo hear His heart, to recognize His voice, to follow His dreams for youAs you continue to compose new movements in the song of your life
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