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Everyday Saints Devotional 11

by David Joynt on January 12, 2022


ECCLESIASTES 1:1-3 | 1 The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. 3 What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun?

The Sabbath command, and its attendant practices, frees us from the tyranny of work. Work can become something that diminishes and depletes us. It can include a drain of energy and creativity,
leading to exhaustion and emptiness. It can focus our hearts on success and internal and external expectations can come to
dominate our thoughts. It can become an experience of repetition, controlling regulation or burdensome authority. Finally, it can be a brutal quest for survival.

A day away from work should free us from these ills, becoming a space in which we can adjust our perspectives, tune our attitudes, and tend our souls.

Has work been a burden for you at times?

How so?

Tags: work, burden

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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