Sabbath Quotes

• Sabbath is not simply the pause that refreshes. It is the pause that transforms.

  Walter Brueggemann

  Pauses

  Walter Brueggemann (2014). “Sabbath as Resistance”, p.45, Westminster John Knox Press

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sabbath observance invites us to stop. It invites us to rest. It asks us to notice that while we rest, the world continues without our help. It invites us to delight in the world's beauty and abundance.

  Wendell Berry

  Delight, World, Helping

  8 Copy quote

• If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  Ordinary, Creation, Get Away

  10 Copy quote

• The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Space, Trying, Six

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (2005). “The Sabbath”, p.22, Macmillan

  174 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you don't take a Sabbath, something is wrong. You're doing too much, you're being too much in charge. You've got to quit, one day a week, and just watch what God is doing when you're not doing anything.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  One Day, Watches, Too Much

  112 Copy quote

• A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the most joyous day of the week.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Summer, Flower, Men

  Henry Ward Beecher (1866). “Royal Truths”, p.251

  51 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.

  Alice Walker

  Self Esteem, Literature, Week

  Alice Walker (2013). “The Alice Walker Collection: Non-Fiction”, p.161, Hachette UK

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• "Sabbath is not primarily about us or how it benefits us; it is about God, and how God forms us. It is not, in the first place, about what we do or don't do; it is about God - completing and resting and blessing and sanctifying. These are all things that we don't know much about......But it does mean stopping and being quiet long enough to see - open-mouthed - with wonder - resurrection wonder.....we cultivate the "fear of the Lord". Our souls are formed by what we cannot work up or take charge of. We respond and enter into what the resurrection of Jesus continues to do."

  Eugene H. Peterson

  Jesus, Mean, Blessing

  Eugene H. Peterson (2008). “Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology”, p.150, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• As we keep or break the Sabbath Day we nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope by which man rises.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Men, Lasts, Break

  68 Copy quote

• On the Sabbath- we are reminded that we are not human doings, but human beings.

  Rob Bell

  Doings, Humans, Human Beings

  Twitter post from Aug 22, 2011

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  Distance, Space, Enough

  18 Copy quote

• Our Sabbath practices reveal which Trinity we truly worship: Father, Son, and Spirit... or me, myself, and I.

  Mark Hart

  Father, Son, Practice

  7 Copy quote

• It is time for us to breathe and build margin into our lives for God. Sabbath was intended as a gift, and it is still a gift to us today. If you are weary, worn out, and exhausted the concept of Sabbath will change your life.

  Priscilla Shirer

  Today, Exhausted, Changing Your Life

  64 Copy quote

• Day of the Lord, as all our days should be!

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Lord, Should, Sabbath Day

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (2012). “My Complete Poetical Works (Annotated Edition)”, p.1260, Jazzybee Verlag

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Space, Giving, Goal

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (2005). “The Sabbath”, p.15, Macmillan

  88 Copy quote

  Show source

• O what a blessing is Sunday, interposed between the waves of worldly business like the divine path of the Israelites through the sea! There is nothing in which I would advise you to be more strictly conscientious than in keeping the Sabbath day holy. I can truly declare that to me the Sabbath has been invaluable.

  William Wilberforce

  Sunday, Blessing, Sea

  29 Copy quote

• Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sunday, Civilization, Dedicated

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2734, Delphi Classics

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sabbath requires surrender. If we only stop when we are finished with all our work, we will never stop, because our work is never completely done. With every accomplishment there arises a new responsibility... Sabbath dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished.

  Wayne Muller

  Responsibility, Accomplishment, Needs

  20 Copy quote

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

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Shelter, Hebrew

  10 Copy quote

• I feel as if God had, by giving the Sabbath, given fifty-two springs in every year.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Spring, Years, Two

  8 Copy quote

• The Sabbath is a weekly cathedral raised up in my dining room, in my family, in my heart.

  Anita Diament

  Heart, Religion, Rooms

  46 Copy quote

• And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day .... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it.

  Isaac Williams

  Holy Days, Church, Saturday And Sunday

  46 Copy quote

• O what a blessing is Sunday, interposed between the waves of worldly business like the divine path of the Israelites through the sea.

  Samuel Wilberforce

  Sunday, Blessing, Sea

  8 Copy quote

• If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Death, Drinking, Procrastination

  "On Murder, Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (1839)

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Sundaies of man's life, Thredded together on time's string, Make bracelets to adorn the wife Of the eternal, glorious King. On Sunday heaven's gates stand ope; Blessings are plentiful and rife. More plentiful than hope.

  George Herbert

  Kings, Sunday, Men

  George Herbert (1835). “The Works of George Herbert: Poems”, p.73

  8 Copy quote

  Show source