You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.
Deuteronomy 5:15

I am amazed to see something I had never really noticed before in this commandment from Deuteronomy: that the primary task set aside for sabbath in this verse is the task of remembering.

I am beginning my 17 th year with my congregation. When they called me I was 35. They were a church of 150 members. Today we are 700. We have been through two large building programs to keep up with and make way for the growth. Our staff of one has grown to fifteen. Our youth program is nationally acclaimed. We have had to buy land, move our site, build a new church building. I've been through a clinical depression that nearly paralyzed me. My journey here has been a combination marathon and mountain climb: exhilarating and exhausting.

The need to remember is proclaimed and re proclaimed repeatedly throughout the Bible. What did the people of God need to remember? That they hadn't done it on their own. That they were not sufficient unto themselves. That without God they could do nothing.

Sometimes I wonder how long I can keep up the pace I've maintained at this Church. If I had a sabbatical I would seek strength in remembering. Remembering my call, remembering the Holy Ground on which I felt summoned into ministry, remembering what it means to have time alone with God, remembering what it means to read and be filled, remembering it is God's work, God's Church, God's power at the heart of it all and not my own.