Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.⁹ Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:¹⁰ But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

¹¹ For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. Exodus 20:8-11

If you do not drive a car, then most of this blog will not make any sense to you. If that is the case, I would encourage you to share it with a friend who does drive to help you to understand it.

I find it interesting that over time something which at first seems new, becomes part of the everyday and ordinary; like stop-start technology. If your car is over a certain price point or age, then it will most likely have it. So what is it?

In automobiles, a start-stop system or stop-start system automatically shuts down and restarts the internal combustion engine to reduce the amount of time the engine spends idling, thereby reducing fuel consumption and emissions. Courtesy of Wikipedia

To the person at the traffic light waiting to cross, it may seem like the driver has stalled the car, when in fact the car has momentarily fallen asleep as the driver lift the clutch. Most experienced drivers will tell you when you are instructed to drive, you are taught to put the car into neutral when you are in a waiting position. However, what most of us drivers do is keep the clutch depressed, in first gear, car waiting for the traffic to change. This is a bad habit and one which could cause an accident if your car was pushed by another vehicle from behind. If you do not lift your clutch, then the technology cannot kick in. The fuel saving device will be dormant unless you change your driving habits.

What the motor industry has done with this device is effectively two things; reduce fuel consumption and emissions and keep in check a bad habit of holding the clutch down whilst the car is idling. Not only is the car given a chance to rest but the driver is too. This will only happen if you lift your clutch.

The Seventh-day Sabbath was created for such a purpose but many people, including those of us who know what the bible commands forget that rest can only be gained by lifting our foot off the clutch pedal. All of the potential benefits will be so easily lost if we keep our thoughts, our financial burdens, our 24-7 work attitude in drive mode right through the Sabbath hours. The start-stop technology was created first by God, but just like the contraption for the car, we have to engage in it to gain maximum benefits.

Our song today is ‘Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy’. Click on the picture to listen.