Thou shalt remember the sabbath day, to sanctify it.
- Exodus 20:8 (Jubilee Bible)
A beautiful quote from Mark Buchanan's book The Rest of God:
Before we keep a Sabbath day, we cultivate a Sabbath heart.
A Sabbath heart sanctifies time.
This is not ritual.
It's a perspective.
And it's not a shift in circumstances....
But you make a deliberate choice to shift point of view,
to come at your circumstances from a fresh angle
and with greater depth of field.
You choose to see your life otherwise,
through a different lens,
from a different standpoint,
with a different mind-set.
The root of the Hebrew word for "sanctify" means "to betroth."
It is to pledge marriage.
It is to choose to commit yourself, all of yourself,
to this man or this woman,
and then to honor that commitment in season and in out.
Sanctifying time works the same way.
You pledge to commit yourself, all of yourself,
to this time,
and then you honor that commitment
whether it's convenient or not.
...Sabbath is time sanctified, time betrothed,
time we perceive and receive and approach differently from all other time.
Sabbath time is unlike every and any other time
on the clock and the calendar.
We are more protective of it and generous with it.
We become more ourselves in the presence of Sabbath:
more vulnerable, less afraid.
More ready to confess,
to be silent,
to be small,
to be valiant.
There is no day in all creation that can banish our aloneness,
even while meeting us in it,
like this day.
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