Holy and Sanctified

I am loving what teaching on Wednesday nights is teaching me. I have 5th, 6th, and 7th grade girls and when I am preparing my lessons I find that if I can just take myself back to when I was that age, I remember just how much I thought I knew, but really had no idea about. Even the simple things like what Sabbath is, which is what I taught on this week. If you had asked me what Sunday was for me when I was 11 or 12, I'm sure I would have given you a really good church answer back, but I can tell you now that I hadn't even begun to understand what God's intentions for a lot of things were.

So, before I could teach I had to ask myself that question. What is Sunday to me? Is what I use Sunday for, what God made it for?

"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do your work, but the seventh day is Sabbath, the day of the Lord, your God. In it you shall do no work, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor the stranger within your gates, for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and sanctified it." -Exodus 20:8-10

Two things I realized from this scripture:

1. God Sanctified Sunday, meaning He set it apart. For me, even though I claim I've made my Sunday about Jesus by going to church and participating in ministry meetings, truthfully it's no different from any other day. I've let those things become just as routine as going to school or work. I think about Luke 10:38-42 where Mary sits at Jesus' feet while Martha is running around doing meaningless tasks. All He wants was exactly what Mary was doing. Just be with Him.

2. The other thing I caught was how we are to keep Sunday holy. I've heard the word holy a thousand times growing up and never really thought about it's meaning until I read Elisabeth Elliot's definition this past summer. She says holy, comes from the root word wholly, which also means complete, hearty or healthy. So, if Sunday is meant to be sanctified and holy, then it should differ form all other days and no matter what happened, what you were going through, sickness, stress, or loss. On Sunday, you can spend time at the Lord's feet and be filled again, and made full.