The Trash Truck Mystery
8 “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.
Exodus 20:8-11
Dear Church Family,
This was a short week because of the Memorial Day holiday, and I was reminded of it in an unexpected way. Walking to the sanctuary on Wednesday, I saw our trash truck pulling into the parking lot. It struck me as odd—trash day is Tuesday. Then I remembered: every holiday week, pickup gets pushed back a day.
My math brain started spinning. If they come a day late, how do they ever catch up? They have the same number of stops, the same amount of work. Push everything forward one day, and logically, they should stay perpetually behind. Yet somehow, next week they'll be back on Tuesday. The math doesn't add up, but it works.
I think Sabbath is like that.
If Sabbath were a test, I'd probably fail. I'm terrible at stopping because I always feel like I'm trying to catch up. Even last Monday—a holiday!—I did a little work, telling myself it would keep me from falling behind during the week.
That's exactly backward from what Sabbath is about.
Sabbath isn't about catching up or getting ahead. It's about stopping our regularly scheduled programming to simply be. It's a day to rest and truly re-create ourselves—to be made new again—so we're ready for another week.
Most pastors take Fridays as their Sabbath since Sundays keep us pretty busy. Over the past few months, I've been trying to really honor Fridays as rest. I'm intentional about not checking email (most of the time) and staying off my phone as much as possible. I'm not perfect at it, but I keep trying.
Maybe that's the real lesson of Sabbath: it's not something we're supposed to "get right." It's something we're called to keep practicing.
In Jesus' day, religious leaders were strict about defining work. Remember when Jesus got in trouble for letting his disciples pick grain on the Sabbath? The Pharisees called it labor. In Israel today, elevators still stop on every floor during Sabbath so observant Jews don't have to push buttons—because even that counts as work.
But Jesus reminded those same Pharisees: "The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath" (Mark 2:27). This gift of rest was meant for all of us. It wasn't designed as a test to pass or fail, but as a grace to receive.
So this Friday—perhaps as you're reading this—I'm going to practice Sabbath again. I'll be helping our newly graduated daughter move back home, which definitely involves manual labor. But I'm choosing to focus on the relationships, the gift of the day, and time with one of my favorite people. We'll take breaks. We'll laugh. We'll be present with each other and with God.
God is always inviting us into Sabbath rest. It might be a full day, or small moments throughout your week—a deep breath, a pause, a minute of gratitude. However it happens for you, I pray you'll find time to be still and remember that God is God, and you are beloved.
The trash truck mystery may never make mathematical sense to me, but somehow the work gets done and the schedule resets. Maybe that's how grace works too.
With God's Love,
Pastor Karl
