When You Use Physics to Define 'Work'

When you see 'no work' as not moving at all!
(Links: 'Work' in physics; 'Work': the transfer of mechanical energy)

The Sabbath commandment says, "...the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work..." (Deut. 5:14, NIV). If "work" here is defined as "force multiplied by distance travelled", then as a Sabbathkeeper you shouldn't be moving at all!

1) Not a step of the foot
2) Not a lift of a finger
3) Not a single breath

And if thoughts can travel and take you places, and thinking requires some measure of effort, then,

4) you shouldn't be thinking at all.

This is DEATH, not Sabbathkeeping.

"At Jerusalem, where the Saviour now was, many of the learned rabbis lived. Here their false ideas about the Sabbath were taught to the people. Great numbers came to worship at the temple, and thus the rabbis' teaching was spread far and wide. Christ wished to correct these errors. This was why He healed the man on the Sabbath day, and told him to carry his bed. He knew that this act would attract the attention of the rabbis, and thus would give Him an opportunity to instruct them. So it proved. The Pharisees brought Christ before the Sanhedrin, the chief council of the Jews, to answer the charge of Sabbathbreaking.

The Saviour declared that His action was in harmony with the Sabbath law. It was in harmony with the will and the work of God. "My Father worketh hitherto," He said, "and I work." John 5:17.

God works continually in sustaining every living thing. Was His work to cease upon the Sabbath day? Should God forbid the sun to fulfil its office on the Sabbath? Should He cut off its rays from warming the earth and nourishing vegetation?

Should the brooks stay from watering the fields, and the waves of the sea still their ebbing and flowing? Must the wheat and maize stop growing, and the trees and flowers put forth no bud or blossom on the Sabbath?

Then man would miss the fruits of the earth, and the blessings that sustain his life. Nature must continue her work, or man would die. And man also has a work to do on this day. The necessities of life must be attended to, the sick must be cared for, the wants of the needy must be supplied. God does not desire His creatures to suffer an hour's pain that may be relieved on the Sabbath or any other day.

Heaven's work never ceases, and we should never rest from doing good. Our own work the law forbids us to do on the rest day of the Lord. The toil for a livelihood must cease; no labour for worldly pleasure or profit is lawful upon that day. But the Sabbath is not to be spent in useless inactivity. As God ceased from His labour of creating, and rested upon the Sabbath, so we are to rest. He bids us lay aside our daily occupations, and devote those sacred hours to

1) healthful rest,
2) to worship, and
3) to holy deeds.

"
(from Sabbathkeeping, in: Story of Jesus, by Ellen G. White)