Dear Friends who love God and the Sabbath,

A few months ago our daughter shared a Sabbath song that she found on YouTube called “Temple Made of Time.” If you want to view it, here is the link: TEMPLE MADE OF TIME.

Not only have I enjoyed the beautiful music of this song, but the lyrics have inspired me with the thought that God created a “temple made of time” called the Sabbath where we can worship Him each week. Here are some of the words to that song:

“God took six days and created earth, and moon, the stars and sun,
On the seventh day He rested from the work which He had done,
Then He blessed it, made it holy, as a gift for every man,
To remind us where we came from, and just how this world began.

Holy day, purified, set apart, sanctified: 
Enter in to joy divine, in this temple made of time

Oft forsaken and forgotten, desecrated and profaned,
But the sacred fourth commandment is still valid and unchanged.
Hear the Father gently calling, if you love Me keep each one.
Not for merit or salvation, but because you love My Son.”

These words express the joy of entering a temple each week to experience joy divine, as we give God a day—because we love Jesus! He is there, longing for us to stop our busyness and remember Him, where we came from, and how the world began. The Sabbath is a reminder that our wonderful Creator created the world in six days. “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” Exodus 20:11, and again, “It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed” Exodus 31:17.

Also, I’ve been reading a new book by A. J. Swoboda entitled Subversive Sabbath—the Surprising Power of Rest in a Nonstop World.  It is a strange title, because I don’t think of the Sabbath as “subversive,” but its main point is that the Sabbath undermines the world and its way of thinking. Success, achievement, constant busyness, and the devil himself are undermined when we stop and honor God by keeping His Sabbath day holy and special. Here is a short excerpt:

“Not only did a day of rest orient Adam and Eve’s life around God, it also orients our hearts, bodies and minds toward the Creator. Sabbath reminds us that ‘our time’ was never our time in the first place. All time is God’s time…To be a Christian was, and is, to reorient one’s entire life and death around Jesus Christ. Sabbath is an orientation as well–an all-encompassing turning toward the Creator God that changes everything in our lives. Sabbath is that kind of complete reorientation of our lives toward the hope and redemption of Christ’s work. Sabbath baptizes our week into the grace
and mercy of God.”

Let us enter into joy divine this Sabbath.