“The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath,” Jesus told the Pharisees (Mark 2:27). The biblical prohibition on work was life giving, but the thicket of rules about what exactly counted as “work” ended up being so dense and forbidding that the Pharisees were scandalized when Jesus healed the sick on the Sabbath. Something has gone wrong with our disciplines when we become more obsessed with the mechanics and mechanisms of fulfilling them than with the gift they are meant to give. So we should be wary of legalism in the way we implement our hour, day, or week of
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