In preparation for a message on the 4th commandment, I came across a quote by William Wilberforce on the value of a Sabbath day. Ill. William Wilberforce, memorialized in the movie, Amazing Grace, was a member of British Parliament in the early 1800s. You may remember that he was the courageous politician who led the fight to abolish slavery in British Empire. That fight took him 20 years. By own admission, he had a huge ego, and often got carried away with ambition. At the end of week of furious work, he wrote in his journal:
Blessed be God for the day of rest and religious occupations wherein earthly things assume their true size and ambition is stunted….
For Wilberforce, Sabbath was a kind of check and balance system, to help him keep his career in perspective. He was saying, without withdrawing every seven days, I would get all out of balance. I would begin to think only thing that mattered was winning political races, even if I am motivated with right reasons.
Some of Wilberforce’s friends did not keep the Sabbath as he did. Those friends took their lives. Wilberforce wrote:
With peaceful Sundays, the strings would never have snapped as they did from over-tension.
Posted by svshaw 
