Lynne M. Baab – Sabbath Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest

Marva Dawn – Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

Wayne Muller – Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal & Delight in our Busy Lives

 

Key Scriptures: Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Exodus 20:8-11; Genesis 2:1-3

 

Begin the Sabbath day by lighting 2 candles (since the Exodus as account of the Sabbath says “Remember” and the Deuteronomic says “Observe”). While lighting the candles, say this prayer or a similar one:

 

 

Enlighten our darkness and guide us and all humankind, Thy children, towards truth and eternal light. Amen. (M. Dawn)

 

You might also pray for the activities of your Sabbath day – that they might be restful and that you might cease from all work, worry, anxiety, productivity, needing to be God, striving to create your own future, and so forth. Pray also that your Sabbath might be a time of embracing people and Christian values, of feasting and intimacy, laughter and delight. (M. Dawn)

 

Spend time praying about your reactions to this invitation to cease from certain things on the Sabbath. Ask for God’s guidance about what is best for you to cease from doing. Bring your fears to God. (L. Baab)

 

 

Lord, it is night.  The night is for stillness.

Let us be still in the presence of God. It is night after a long day.

What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done;

let it be. The night is dark. Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives rest in you. The night is quiet. Let the quietness of your peace enfold us, all dear to us, and all who have no peace. The night heralds the dawn. Let us look expectantly to a new day, new joys, new possibilities. In your name, we pray. Amen.

 

 

"Sabbath requires surrender. If we only stop when we are finished with all our work, we will never stop—because our work is never completely done.With every accomplishment arises a new responsibility. Every swept floor invites another sweeping, every child bathed invites another bathing. When all life moves in such cycles, what is ever finished? The sun goes round, people are born and die, and when are we finished? If we refuse rest until we are finished, we will never rest until we die. Sabbath dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished.

 

The old, wise Sabbath says: Stop now. As the sun touches the horizon, take the hand off the plow, put down the phone, let the pen rest on the paper, turn off the computer, leave the mop in the bucket and the car in the drive. There is no room for negotiation, no time to be seduced by the urgency of our responsibilities. We stop because there are forces larger than we that take care of the universe, and while our efforts are important, necessary and useful, they are not (nor are we) indispensable. The galaxy will somehow manage without us for this hour, this day, and so we are invited—nay commanded—to relax, and enjoy our relative unimportance, our humble place at the table in a very large world. The deep wisdom embedded in creation will take care of things for a while." (W. Muller)

 

Whatever is foreseen in joy

Must be lived out from day to day.

Vision held open in the dark

By our ten thousand days or work.

Harvest will fill the barn; for that

The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled

By work of ours; the field is tilled

And left to grace. That we may reap,

Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood

Rests on our day, and finds it good.

 

-Wendell Berry

 

 

 

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