Day Of Rest By Norman Wirzba Summary

Norman Wirzba’s book Living the Sabbath, Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight, expresses how the concept of Sabbath and Sabbath rest is meant for everyone. It is not just for those who believe or just for some. Every creature on this planet needs at least one day of complete rest. This concept, however is hard to achieve now a days because our society is setup to constantly keep going. This goes in hand with the book of Luke. Luke focus on the economic issues. Issues that faced primarily women, children, and widows because they are the ones that are more vulnerable. The Sabbath concept is where everyone prepares themselves and their families for a day of rest. This is a day that no work would be completed. In order to accomplish

Factories are set up now to be able to run twenty-four seven, meaning that there is no reason for a person to take a break. This is not only with factories. This concept can be seen within the college sector. College students are getting less than needed because of the amount of school work placed on them, therefor college students nearly do not even consider a day of rest, because that would prevent them from completing the assignments that are assigned to them. Also, it makes it hard for people to know where to rest, because the average human moves at least 2-3 times in their lifetime, so the concept of home, is really irrelevant. This concept of overworking is accomplished, because it is targeted at the lower income families. Groups of individuals who cannot afford to take time off, because by doing so it prevents them from having the financial security that they will be able to purchase necessary items. This reflects the ideas of debtors prisons. One would think that this is no longer an issue since the U.S outlawed debtors prisons years ago, but that is not the case. Modern day debtors prisons are still around. They can take the form of student debt or tickets from law enforcement. These are also targeted on the minority and on the poor because those are the people that will not be able to repay, so the amount due continues to grow. We,

poorer. These groups of people were considered vulnerable because they had little to no source of income. Traditionally, in that time, men were the ones who provided for the families. This idea also stems from the concept that the richer a person is the more blessed by God they would be. This goes back to Egypt where only the wealthy were blessed by God and the others needed to work for it. In our book it talks about how, “Israel should not be like Egypt, and one of the clearest ways to see the difference will be that Israel practiced Sabbath and Egypt does not” (35). Jesus goes against this thought process and states that really, the more poor someone is the richer they are in the end. Jesus wants us to be people who express “neighbor love” a love that exhibits that one person has the other person's back. It is the concept of pain and suffering. People do not need others to come and try to solve all of their problems. They just need someone there to help them through it and to listen. We should not provide solutions, but just be there for them (79). Be the person someone