“What is this evil thing that you are doing, profaning the Sabbath day?” — Nehemiah 13:17
Forgive me as I climb up on my soap box. I am all for separation of church and state, but even as short as my lifespan, I have seen a steady erosion of the Sabbath. Nobody thinks a thing about scheduling a soccer game, a community meeting, or a hundred other things on the “Day of Rest.” Forget about the poor souls who have to work on their Sabbath Day, now the Sabbath has become the day where we all rush, rush, rush to complete everything we couldn’t complete during the week.
There was a time when if you scheduled something for a Sunday, someone would raise their hand and say, “We can’t do that then, that’s a Sunday.” That doesn’t happen anymore. And what we have lost is not just a religious tradition, but a cultural rhythm—a collective exhale that the entire community used to share.
The real evil Nehemiah addressed wasn’t just working, but the loss of intentionality; the profaning was the transformation of a protected sanctuary of time into just another day for commerce and convenience. Today, that convenience comes at a terrible price: the price of exhaustion.
The Sabbath has been universally replaced by the “Catch-Up Day.” It’s the day we cram in grocery trips, mow the lawn, answer the backlog of emails, run errands, and prepare the house for Monday. It is less a day of rest and more a day of frantic, self-imposed labor designed to stave off the panic of the coming work week. Our culture, which already applauds bustle, finds its ultimate expression not in resting, but in proving how much we can achieve even on our day off.
There was a reason why God included in his Commandments to “remember the Sabbath, and make it Holy.” The word “holy” (kadosh) means “set apart.” The commandment wasn’t just a religious obligation; it was a societal mandate for human well-being, designed to level the playing field. It ensured that the servant and the oxen got the same protected rest as the master. It forced everyone to stop, ensuring that markets couldn’t operate and that the pressure to participate ceased for 24 hours.
By failing to enforce any communal boundary, we have allowed the tyranny of the urgent to devour our downtime. We no longer have a universal “time-out”—the excuse that says, “Sorry, the whole town shuts down then.” We must now individually fight tooth and nail to protect our own space, leading to social guilt, isolation, and constant scheduling conflicts.
I’m not suggesting that you not watch a ball game or refuse to answer the phone on the Sabbath, but a few steps in the right direction are in order. The goal is simple: to reclaim the spirit of the Sabbath by setting apart time for rest, reflection, and relationships, even if the rest of the world refuses to join.
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