The Sabbath: A Delight

How many of you have been having lesson after lesson about Sabbath observance?  Our ward and stake have been going nuts with it.  The talk I was assigned to teach this month (by Russell M. Nelson) was also taught by the presidency three weeks ago, and we've had other talks and lessons on it too.  We must really need it.

I started by telling them how all the lessons had been helping me pay attention to what I was really doing on Sundays, and I told them how my last two Sundays went.  Last Saturday I made sure to iron a tiny dress shirt in the afternoon instead of waiting until church.  And I woke up early so I could have time to read scriptures before I had to help my family.  But then as we were getting out of the shower (at 6:30am) we heard chatter on the baby monitor, and were soon joined by little helpers.  Alan left for bishopric meetings and I had yet to read any scriptures.  We somehow made it through our morning and made it to church, but my littles were WILD little cowpokes in church.  I had to bring them both out to the foyer twice and apologized to everyone sitting around us.  By that afternoon, I was spent and feeling like my much anticipated Sabbath was shot.  So I gathered my little ones up and watched a movie ("My Turn on Earth") on the couch with them.  They weren't really into it, but I felt the spirit as the plan of salvation was shown by the characters.  It felt like a moment of grace.  This Sunday my life was no less messy.  I did get a few minutes to go over my lesson before church, and we did make it to 9am choir practice on time, but my teenagers were glum and choir and sacrament were still full of screeches, giggles, wiggles and cries.  I told the ladies that as I reflected on my tries to be better at the Sabbath, I was reminded that we are blessed with a perpetual covenant from someone who really wants us on His team.  The Sabbath is His gift to us to remind us that we are bound by that covenant if only we continue to try to keep it.

We read the scripture in Isaiah that calls the sabbath a delight and lists the amazing blessings for those who delight in the Lord's day.  Then I told them that Mariah taught me when she said that the Sabbath is very personal and may look different for different people, but we KNOW when we are keeping the Sabbath because we can feel it in our hearts.

I asked them to picture the best Sabbath they have ever had (or dream to have), and to tell me the feeling they are seeking when they try to have that kind of Sabbath.  People gave great participation--including the new member who is getting married this Saturday so her boyfriend can get baptized, and the member who was baptized in our ward when she was 9 and felt like she needed to come back a few weeks ago because she was having such a difficult time with her twin pregnancy.

Then I asked people which behaviors on the Sabbath helped them achieve those feelings.  We had a great discussion and again, we had a huge cross-section of people chime in.  The last two to add things said the very things that Elder Nelson suggested in his talk--teaching our children the gospel (they read conference talks and visit people in the memory unit of the nursing home near them) and doing family history work (I told my ward family history specialist friend I'd pay her off later for coming up with the exact right answer).  I closed by bearing testimony that keeping the commandment to honor the Sabbath (one that has been given SO MANY TIMES) comes with great blessings that Heavenly Father is anxious to give us if only we will try.  He grants us his grace when we do the smallest thing to demonstrate that we want to be on His team.