Quotes about Sabbath

We used to sing the hymn "Take Time to Be Holy." But perhaps we should be singing, "Take time to be human." Or finally, "Take time." Sabbath is taking time … time to be holy … time to be human.

Sabbath becomes a decisive, concrete, visible way of opting for and aligning with the God of rest.

The way of mammon (capital, wealth) is the way of commodity that is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restlessness without any Sabbath. Jesus taught his disciples that they could not have it both ways.

The Sabbath rest of God is the acknowledgment that God and God's people in the world are not commodities to be dispatched for endless production and so dispatched, as we used to say, as "hands" in the service of a command economy. Rather they are subjects situated in an economy of neighborliness. All of that is implicit in the reality and exhibit of divine rest.

I go; but feed my sheep; for Me the Sabbath at the long week's close--for you the task; for you the tongues of fire. Thus shalt thou know the Master Architect, who plans so well, He may depart and leave the work to others.

God presents the Sabbath rest as a shelter we can enter. (Hebrews 4:1-11)

An Ulster Scot may come to disbelieve in God, but not to wear his weekday clothes on the Sabbath.