Dear Sabbath-honoring friends,

When Frank Sandford wrote the song “The Holy Sabbath Day” (Warrior Songs #200) he included the words “pure worship of heart…a day without alloy.” An alloy is a metal that is made from mixing several kinds together. He perhaps was expressing the thought that we should not be mixing burdens with blessings on the Sabbath. The beginning of the Sabbath is a great opportunity to think over the past week and praise God for our many blessings as well as to bring Him pure worship. It is not a time to dwell on our unsolved problems.

Blanche Craig gave a similar thought in Warrior Songs #206, “Breath of the Sabbath” where she wrote, “A time when all labor is ended, and difficult problems must cease; These twenty-four hours are so sacred with heavenly blessing and peace.”

God’s intention is to give us a day where we can rest and fully enjoy Him without being distracted by thinking about the many cares of life. Nehemiah demonstrated the same thing when he commanded that no burden be brought through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. The gates were to be shut tight and not opened again until the Sabbath was over. The Sabbath is to be a day without burdens. As humans we need to have a day that is truly care free or as another song puts it “our troubles all take wing.” It is glorious to let them go.

I remember hearing a godly Kingdom man who was a farmer, say that if there was still hay in the field at sundown, even if it rained it was fine to let it rot and not even think about it! The Sabbath is one day when it is permissible to live in denial of all our problems! We can face them again once the Sabbath is over. We have so many pressures and stresses in life that we need a pressure relief valve to release them. The Sabbath can be that pressure relief valve each week so that we don’t experience mental burnout. I think Sabbath keeping can be a great preventive medicine to get ahead of what the world defines as mental illness.

A final reason for Sabbath keeping is that it gives us a day to be able to un-distractedly focus on God. It is His holy day which is set apart from the others for Him. Let us give it fully to Him as our way of honoring and loving Him.