Years ago, one of my neighbors let me know that he did not want my dog stepping on his grass when I walked the dog around the block. I did not want to make him angry, so I made sure to pull the dog off the grass and onto the road whenever we walked past his house. I felt no joy in keeping my neighbor satisfied; I just did it out of a sense of obligation.

There are many things we do in life just to satisfy an obligation or to avoid someone's anger. We might even think that practicing spiritual disciplines such as prayer, confession, meditation, fasting, and Sabbath keeping would somehow reduce God's wrath toward us. But that's not the point of spiritual disciplines. We do them gladly out of thanks to God.

Jesus faced people who accused him of violating the Sabbath because he and his disciples picked and ate grain on that day. Those people looked on the Sabbath law as an obligation, and they tried to point out that Jesus and his disciples were not keeping the Sabbath requirements and were thus making God angry.

Jesus' response shows us that Sabbath was meant not to be an obligation but a gift. The gift of Sabbath is to renew and transform us by calling us to set aside time from normal routines to bask in the joy of God's presence.