Quotes about Sabbath

Sabbath-keeping requires two orientations. One is Godward. The other is timeward. To keep Sabbath well—as both a day and an attitude—we have to think clearly about God and freshly about time. We likely, at some level, need to change our minds about both. Unless we trust God's sovereignty, we won't dare risk Sabbath. And unless we receive time as abundance and gift, not as ration and burden, we'll never develop a capacity to savor Sabbath.

Safely through another week,   GOD has brought us on our way,   Let us now a blessing seek   On th' approaching sabbath-day:

He will not be held guiltless who neglects to relieve suffering on the Sabbath. God's holy rest day was made for man, and acts of mercy are in perfect harmony with its intent. God does not desire His creatures to suffer an hour's pain that may be relieved upon the Sabbath or any other day. The demands upon God are even greater upon the Sabbath than upon other days.

The claim so often put forth, that Christ changed the Sabbath, is disproved by His own words. In His sermon on the mount He said: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

As the sun goes down, let the voice of prayer and the hymn of praise mark the close of the sacred hours and invite God's presence through the cares of the week of labor. Thus parents can make the Sabbath, as it should be, the most joyful day of the week. They can lead their children to regard it as a delight, the day of days, the holy of the Lord, honorable. —Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6, pp. 358, 359.

The Sabbath is a token between God and His people. It is a holy day, given by the Creator to man as a day upon which to rest, and reflect upon sacred things. God designed it to be observed through every age as a perpetual covenant. It was to be regarded as a peculiar treasure, a trust to be carefully cherished.—Our High Calling, p. 343.

God saw that a Sabbath was essential for man, even in Paradise. He needed to lay aside his own interests and pursuits for one day of the seven, that he might more fully contemplate the works of God and meditate upon his power and goodness. He needed a Sabbath to remind him more vividly of God and to awaken gratitude because all that he enjoyed and possessed came from the beneficent hand of the Creator.

The importance of the Sabbath as a memorial of creation is that it keeps ever present the true reason why worship is due to God,"—because He is the Creator, and we are His creatures.

The Sabbath, especially, was given for the benefit of man and for the honor of God. --Story of Redemption, pg. 141

Sabbath was not a burden for him, any more than it was a private day off that he could take or leave. Sabbath was who he was . It was his stake in the ongoing life of his community, the one set day each week when he entered into communion with God and his neighbor.

Stop for one whole day every week, and you will remember what it means to be created in the image of God, who rested on the seventh day not from weariness but from complete freedom. The clear promise is that those who rest like God find themselves free like God, no longer slaves to the thousand compulsions that send others rushing toward their graves.

Surely this sabbath, of all others, calls forth these feelings in a supreme degree; a frame of united love and triumph well becomes it, and holy confidence and unrestrained affection.