Sabbath rest is something most of us don't understand any more. It's not just a matter of the blue laws, which prohibited commerce on Sunday, becoming extinct. We have lost the ability to rest. We are all continually multi-tasking; surfing the internet, communicating with our cellphones, twitter, skype, playing browser games with strangers around the globe or using one of the many social networking application. If we're not doing that, we're trying to find some way to obtain, organize or get rid of an accumulation of material possessions, or pursuing any of a thousand possible leisure options to keep ourselves amused. We're doing anything to keep ourselves busy. What are we running from? What do we not want to face? Could it be our very own creator?
When God set forth the Sabbath rest and Year of Jubilee for the Israelites, it was intended to make them stop. Stop and rest as in the case of the Sabbath and stop and start all over again as in the case of the Year of Jubilee. In both cases, the outcome was that people were forced to recognize that life was not all of their doing or all about them. Rest, because that's what God did on the seventh day after he created the world. Return everything to it's original owner, because we are only sojourners after all. Both celebrations were to remind the Israelites and us of the supremacy and permanency of God as opposed to those of us for whom life is fleeting and all of our possessions only temporary.
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