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Day of Delight and Blessing, May 25
If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy
pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of
the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own
ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own
words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause
thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the
heritage of Jacob thy father.
Isaiah 58:13, 14
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The Sabbath ... is God’s time, not ours; when we trespass upon it we
are stealing from God.... God has given us the whole of six days in which
to do our work, and has reserved only one to Himself. This should be
a day of blessing to us—a day when we should lay aside all our secular
matters and center our thoughts upon God and heaven.
But while we worship God, we are not to consider this a drudgery.
The Sabbath of the Lord is to be made a blessing to us and to our children.
They are to look upon the Sabbath as a day of delight, a day which God
has sanctified; and they will so consider it if they are properly instructed....
They can be pointed to the blooming flowers and the opening buds, the
lofty trees and beautiful spires of grass, and taught that God made all
these in six days and rested on the seventh day and hallowed it. Thus the
parents may bind up their lessons of instruction to their children so that
when these children look upon the things of nature they will call to mind
the great Creator of them all....
We are not to teach our children that they must not be happy on the
Sabbath, that it is wrong to walk out of doors. Oh, no. Christ led His
disciples out by the lakeside on the Sabbath day and taught them. His
sermons on the Sabbath were not always preached within enclosed walls....
Many say they would keep the Sabbath if it were convenient to do so.
But this day is not yours; it is God’s day, and you have no more right to
take it than you have to steal my purse. God has reserved it, sanctified
and blessed it; and it is your duty to devote this time to His service, to
make it honorable, to call it a delight.
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