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Top X June 26, 2025 Devotional

by David Joynt on June 26, 2025


EXODUS 20:9 | 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work.

 

The Sabbath command is also a work command: “six days you shall labor.” Although work can be tyranny, as in the case of slavery or forced labor, it is as much a gift as rest and holy refreshment. In fact our Reformation ancestors were eager to see our so-called     secular jobs as blessed vocations too. Too often we devalue either Sabbath rest or weekly work. Some see work as something to be endured until they have “free time,” and they don’t expect their labor to be a way to serve and encounter God. Others see rest as a mere way to recharge for work, as if Sabbath was just an instrumental good and not an independent blessing.

 

How do you see work and Sabbath relating?

 

 

Gracious God,

Give me a sense of calling everyday. Let me partner with You in rest and play and work. Integrate my life.

Amen.

 

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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