sabbath: revisited

Several years back, I posted on the Sabbath and my opinion on its observation. I have always had an aversion to how it was enforced when I was younger, so I didn't stop to think that it might have some benefits.

When I was a kid, what honoring a Sunday Sabbath meant fluctuated a bit, but from my perspective it almost always meant making the day more boring. Church was obviously boring for a younger boy, but as entertainment appeared to conflict with keeping the day holy, there were times when Sundays were intentionally made to be dull so as not to dishonor the Sabbath.

Now that I am an adult and have more control over how my life is run, a weekly break from work does not sound like a bad thing. My last time reading through the Bible one of the things I watched for was how the Sabbath was to be observed by Israel and what its true purpose was. It was during this reading that it occurred to me that keeping the day holy was not about putting on a show of piety on that day, but rather one of trust. Part of the point of the Sabbath was that God's people trusted Him enough that they would break from work one day out of the week even when doing so would impact them economically (like farmers during the harvest, or merchants traveling distances between cities).

A further point that I frequently heard when growing up was that workers need at least one day a week off.  Too many work days in a row will drive a person crazy.  This is something that I have always agreed with, and I still do.  Beyond that, though, I am finally at a point in my life where a Sabbath rest sounds like an appealing thing.  It just has to be on different terms than I grew up with.

Things that I think should qualify as a Sabbath rest include, but are not limited to, the following.

• An afternoon at the park
• An afternoon at the beach (no, still no real beaches in Kansas)
• An afternoon watching football
• An afternoon playing football, soccer, baseball, etc
• An afternoon watching a movie
• An afternoon reading
• An afternoon playing board/card games

While it is certainly God's privilege to expect sacrifices that seem absurd, the requirement of boredom one day a week always seemed ridiculous.  I think I would feel differently about it if I saw that doing this grew my relationship with Him, or caused me to understand Scripture better, or provided some other notable spiritual benefit.  For me it did not, and it still doesn't.  Strip away the anti-entertainment rule, though, and I am all about slowing down and having a quiet and reflective day once a week.

change

A while back I noted that I had worked at a grocery store that installed a CoinStar machine under the guise of serving customers better. Since the machine took a 7% cut of the change total, I always questioned the purpose of it. It wasn't like we turned down customers who opted to pay with coins, and at the least a bank would count and deposit coins free of charge for customers. Since the machine was providing a service that I felt the store should be providing anyway I was always a little bit cynical about that machine being used as a source of revenue. It seemed more a pointless extravagance in that situation, but I just today heard of a story that indicates that the grocery business may have changed since I was a cashier.

Apparently, a mother in Portland, Oregon, needed to buy some food for her kids but only had change. The information I have is that she had quarters, but perhaps there were smaller denomination coins there as well. The first grocery store she went to told her that they had a $5 limit on change-only purchases. The second grocery store tried to send her to their change counting machine (I don't know if it was specifically a CoinStar machine) that took a 10% cut of the money. When she pointed out that she could not afford to pay this fee and another customer offered to give her cash for the coins she had the store backed down.

This brings up a few points. First, the grocery store I worked for employed two types of people: high schoolers and the poor. Were the employees who enforced these rules all from the former category, because otherwise I would have expected them to be sympathetic to the woman's plight.

Second, apparently most chains do not have an official policy regarding how much you can pay in coins, but the stores themselves enforce these non-existent rules anyway. I am going to guess that the individual stores do not know that there is no actual policy on the matter because the chains want customers to feel the need to use their for-cost change counting machine.

Finally, this gives me pause since there has been a push over the last few years to accept the dollar coins. Why should anyone switch to using dollar coins if there is a chance cashiers may decide they are not going to accept them?