Good boundaries are essential for effective work and life.  If we don’t keep our boundaries, we will burn out.  Keeping a Sabbath each week, a day to rest from the norm, is not only essential for health, it is commanded by God, so perhaps this should take a higher place of importance in our spiritual ponderings.

How are your boundaries when it comes to your workplace?  Moses was new to the administrative work of his position, and thankfully had a good adviser in his father-in-law Jethro.  Moses was hearing every case for the millions of people freshly freed from Egypt.  Not only did this take up too much of his time, it was burning him out.  But interestingly, it was also burning out the people who came to him.  So Jethro suggests a management model, Moses agrees, and finds some better boundaries in his worklife.  And these boundaries, as they always do, lead to a healthier leader and a healthier community.

How are your boundaries when it comes to your everyday life?  Do you keep a Sabbath day?  While the Sabbath isn’t to be kept as a law or even a rule to obey, it is given to us as a gift.  For 6 days, knock yourself out with your busyness.  But on the seventh, you need to rest and recuperate.  For Jews, the whole week revolves around this Sabbath.  They have three days to prepare for it, and then three days to reflect and be thankful for it before the cycle begins again.  God reminded them of this in their desert wanderings when He gave them 2 days worth of manna every Fri.  Before you decide you just can’t take a day off, reread this section and ponder how God might give you all you need the other six days so you can rest on the seventh.

Today, let’s do an exercise together rather than just a reflection.  After all God did for His people to free them from 400 years of slavery, after plagues and Passover, after pillars of fire and the Red Sea crossing, after plunder and the destruction of their oppressors, God’s people sang.  Moses sang and Miriam sang.  The people sang and prayed and worshiped.

We get pretty wrapped up in the problems of this world, and so we forget to sing.  With the Psalmist we ask “How can we sing the songs of God in a foreign land?” as we look around and don’t see the Kingdom of God, our homeland, anywhere.  It takes work for us to remember all that God has done for us.  And that may be why so often God’s command is to remember.  Pillars in the wilderness and altars on the mountain, communion shared by the congregation and songs that recount our history, all of these are attempts to remember.

So today, take some time to remember all that God has done for you.  Write out your thanksgiving as a song or poem, or just a prayer letter to God.  And as you remember, and as you give thanks, “sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted.”