This generation has difficulty adjusting from a workday mode to a Sabbath-keeping mode for many reasons. One is that life is so fast-paced, with so many ways and activities to spend our time, energies, minds, and attention.
This can be seen in the Parable of the Sower and Seed in Matthew 13, where the seed falls on stony places. With people whose minds are focused on too many things, the Word of God does not take very deep root. And so, as Jesus says, when persecution or trouble arises due to this way of life, they quickly turn aside. They have nothing rooted deeply in them. They have been giving their time, energy, and talents to something else entirely.
Another thing that we can extract from this parable is that we have never, in any generation of man, been so close to the creations of man and so distant from the creations of God. We are surrounded by concrete, steel, glass, plastic, rubber, and everything man makes, and we are rapidly losing touch with the things that God has made.
Our mind tends to focus automatically on what we are surrounded by. Today, we are not walking behind a mule, plowing the ground, and listening to the birds as we plow. Nor are we putting seeds in the ground, watching them come up, and eating the products of what God has made possible by His laws and by the fact that He continues to provide for His Creation. He sends the rain, and He brings forth the fruit. If we do not have contact with God's creation, our minds are quickly surrounded by other things, and we are then cast adrift because of paying attention to those things.
In addition, this Protestant society has spiritually trained us not to regard a day as belonging to God but rather to use time for our own pleasure as though it all belonged to us. If we have been taught at all, we have been taught the wrong day.
It seems we do not have enough time for God, even though we have just as much time as Peter, James, John, Philip, and all of the ancients besides them. How much time does a working mother have today for a good spiritual life after giving her time and energies to her employer, then returning home and doing her responsibilities there? How much time does a father holding two jobs, or working as much overtime as he can, or working plus going to school at night to get ahead (to afford all of the finer things of life) have for God? How much energy does this mother and father have at the end of the week?
All of us are pressured and victimized by this insane system that Satan has put together. However, few of us have much excuse for not using Sabbath time in the way that God intended it to be used.
