When I grew up, Saturday was the day for chores and shopping. We packed a lot into that single day. On a good day, we could squeeze in a visit to one of my older siblings’ family, about 30 to 45 minutes away, or visit my grandparents on the other side of town. Laundry, gardening, cutting the grass, grocery shopping: Saturday meant domestic work like no other day of the week.

I have discovered that in other families where the moms didn’t work outside the home, Wednesday was the day for grocery shopping. Lorraine tells me that her mother also had a laundry day. So that structure spread the tasks out a bit into the week. My mom had no such luxury. Saturday was an everything day.

That was the day I usually went to the grocery store with my mom. She typically shopped one day a week, on Saturday. I would advocate for the food and meals I liked and find reasons for her not to purchase the foods I didn’t like. Usually, she indulged my pickiness.

On one trip, at the grocery store entrance, I took note of a poster that had been there for a few weeks. Similar posters hung in various places in the store so everyone would be sure to see them. I saw my mom talking to strangers in the produce aisle and at the meat counter and concluded that the grocery stores were going to do something bad. My mom wasn’t sure what she was going to do about it, but she didn’t seem happy. Different shoppers would look at the posters and shake their heads in bewilderment.

The big news? The grocery store was about to open on Sundays.

I didn’t know what the word “sabbath” meant, but from what the people were saying, the store was making a big mistake. As far as I knew, this was something no other store had ever done. And there was talk of judgment from God for this. As a child, that scared me. If God was going to get mad at the grocery store where my mom bought our food, what did that mean for us? Would we need to figure out a different way to get our food? Would God punish us for buying food that could now be purchased on Sunday even though we did our shopping on other days?

I could imagine God doing all kinds of things to make us know how angry he was about this. The meat at the counter could go bad. All the vegetables I like could disappear (which weren’t that many), and we would be forced to choose from the others (yuck). Milk would sour. If people ate food purchased on the wrong day, God would strike them down with a sickness or a disease. I easily conceived of the scary God ready to teach everyone a lesson about obedience and disobedience.

It was easy for my child-imagination to run with the anger of God—thinking that he seemed to take a certain glee in catching us red-handed and letting us have it. That view apparently was not uncommon. Friends recently \told me that, as children, they thought of God as angry and poised to punish them at every turn.

But imagining the real God as responding in steadfast love as the Creator to his creatures—even creatures who made themselves enemies of the One who made them-- was much more difficult for me and probably other humans as well. I would even go so far as to say impossible.

I never would have imagined his coming to earth, willingly suffering and then dying for people who don’t even care about him, for people who would be just as happy to forget him. That kind of thinking—definitely above my pay grade!

We had to learn the way of the cross, to hear in our hearts what Jesus said when his critics accused the disciples of breaking the Sabbath or to hear Jesus explaining the burning truth of our own versions of the misconceptions he addressed on the Emmaus Road.

He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:3-8

Man-made laws or practices inspired by the laws of God can be as fluid as the people who make them and interpret them. Then we try to live with or around the laws because we imagine God to be like us. He is not like us. His ways are not ours. I wonder which is greater in number—the number of idols in our modern world or the number of Pharisees accusing Jesus of wrong-headed teaching. Do we think we are made right with God by not doing business at a place that is open on Sunday? We make our own versions of this fallacy and look down on all the others who do not share similar fallacies.

Following rules is not the same as knowing Jesus. Do I really think rules—or, to be more honest, my interpretation of how one lives out these rules—can move God along in making my soul more like the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world? Do I sometimes want to go back to the old ways and trust in laws the way the Israelites doubted and wanted to go back to making bricks or eating leeks in Egypt?

When Jesus called the disciples who left their nets to follow him, did they care what other people thought? How many people walked away sad because of the people or things they loved were more important than Jesus? People seem to be happy to legislate righteousness as long as they are in control of defining what that means. True spirituality is not man-made; we can only receive it from the hands of the Shepherd.

Then Jesus said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then to enter His glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the thing concerning himself. (Luke 24:25-27)

"…Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scripture?"

Father, help us recognize the difference between the golden calves we make with our religious hands and the Lion/Lamb nail-scarred hands not made by hands.

Jesus, teach us your way, not ours; guide us to your still waters, not our raging ones; thank you for not washing us with manufactured cleaning solutions; we bless you, fall down and cry thanks to you for washing us with your shed blood.

Holy Spirit, guide and control; give us Sabbath rest. Deliver us from our own personal Egypts that tell us we know more than we do. Free us from idols. Help us put our trust in the only living God. Lift us out of comfort or fear into the risk-embracing servanthood of the Shepherd King.

Lord of the Sabbath, help us to live every day of every week dependent on you. Let our hearts burn for you today and this Resurrection Sunday, this week, this flickering life of days, each one a grain of sand in the hourglass, falling, kneeling, forming a little mound of life that Jesus can turn over and start fresh at any time he chooses. Let it all be an offering here today and then waft away like the flickering smoke rising from campfires of worship, prayer and praise. Falling sands, burning hearts, sweet aromas.

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 2 Corinthians 2:15