God Day

If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: (Isaiah 58:13)

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8-11)

Last time we looked at the significance of the Sabbath as a symbol or ritual of universal inclusion for God's people. But what does keeping the Sabbath look like today? The next cross-reference takes us to the Ten Commandments, spoken by God to the whole congregation of Israel, the most dramatic public announcement God has ever made, with Jesus' baptism coming a close second in drama. I think if we put aside our biases and ideas about what the Sabbath is we will notice a few things here in the Ten Commandments.
Contrary to the common misconception, the emphasis of the Sabbath is not on avoiding work, although the word "sabbath" means "rest". If we throw away all preconceptions, and read the opening line of the Sabbath commandment we read: "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." So the first key is to recognise that for God, the Sabbath commandment is not about avoiding work at all costs, but about making his holiday (not Australia Day or Labor Day but we could say "God Day" but God calls it "Sabbath Day" so we'll go with that) special. God wants his day to be a special day and he doesn't exactly say how he wants us to do that, although in other places he suggests that his people should meet together on that day, which is where the idea of weekly worship comes from by the way.
Just like the way we need the whole of the second commandment to understand that it is ok to have artwork, we need the whole of the second commandment to understand the bare minimum requirements that God prescribes for keeping his day holy. We are to keep it on the seventh day of the week, to commemorate the seventh day of the week of creation, and we are not to work during that day, or make anybody else work for us.
God made this commandment, not me. God knew when he made it how incompatible it would seem in our modern world. Jesus made it clear that we can take care of emergencies on Sabbath, but anyway, each according to our own conscience we should do our best to avoid working (or studying for work) and avoid letting someone else do professional work for us.
This commandment is hard to keep today in our 24/7 world, but God knew about this when he made it, and he calls on us to show our loyalty by making his day special.