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Over the past few years, the church seems to have doubled down on the message of keeping the Sabbath Day holy… And yet, I’m more confused than ever as to what that actually means. The only things I really do any differently is not spending money unless it is necessary and not listening to the radio when I drive (so I have time to think as I drive, not because I think music/comedy radio is unholy)
Everyone interprets the idea differently, which is fine, but as it is, it’s an extraordinarily nebulous goalpost to be focusing on, don’t you think?
What’s holy? What does it mean to keep a day holy? Is it to maintain its holiness? (what does that even mean?) Is it to try to do things that make the day holier?
It’s good that it’s nebulous because it allows everyone to come up with their own thing. But to go along with your buzzwords thread…
Every 3 or 4 years top leadership comes out with a new motivational slogan and we run the phrase into the ground with overuse.
Every member a missionary.
Lengthen your stride.
Hasten the work.
Keep the sabbath day.
After a while the phrases take on a life of their own. “Keep the sabbath day” starts to lose meaning, it’s just shoehorned it into discussions. The overuse starts to make people sick of hearing it just about the time when a new mission statement comes along.
What I have been told about the Sabbath initiative is that the Brethren prayed, fasted, etc., and were inspired that what the church needed was better Sabbath observance. It is supposed to be somewhat of a cure-all. Like all cure-alls, it will not cure all IMO and the idea is more like snake oil than a true cure-all. RMN’s talk introducing the idea a couple years back referenced not having lists of dos and don’ts, yet in that same talk he gave a list. 🙄 It has always been hard for me to make a direct connection between keeping a commandment and any specific or even non-specific blessing.I pretty much agree with Nibbler. And despite Nelson’s list, I will give credit to the Brethren that they truly have shied away from giving such lists. Like so many other things in the church it’s really up to us to decide what is and is not appropriate. Obviously our modern day scribes and Pharisees would disagree and really want the lists and at the local level I have heard some – but not from our stake leaders. I believe what may be appropriate for one might not be appropriate for another. I also believe it is important to take the sacrament, but beyond that I don’t think there are requirements for what constitutes keeping the Sabbath day holy.
I was thinking about this the other day, and came up with a better question.. “What
principlesshould govern my activities on Sunday?” Here is a short list I came up with:
Love– Showing love to family by creating quality family time activities – can be (but doesn’t have to be) cooking a meal together, watching an inspirational movie, going for a walk, playing a board game, visiting others. Each person and family will have different ways to show love.Renewal– Can be naps, reading a book, and a zillion other ideas. Sacred/Holy– Still working on ideas for this principle. I made time on Sunday to work on catching up on a spiritual journal I have. Because I am trying to sanctify my Sabbeth Observance, I switch to classical music or church music generally. We also play a lot of Christmas music on Sundays during the year. What did god do on the Sabbath? God rested, right? Is there a wrong way to rest? I try to rest from all the measuring, both measuring and being measured.
I wonder if the other gods criticized the god of our creation for what they were or weren’t doing on their day of rest… or whether the god of our creation was constantly being policed by their peers for what they were or weren’t doing.
It’s the day of rest, god is expected to show up for 3 hours of church, otherwise god is being negligent. At church god gets to hear about how they should be “keeping” the day of rest. Other gods there talk about wearing their most uncomfortable robe all day as the father figure in the mansion above leaves to attend five other meetings. Daddy god then looks forward to the start of the work week because it somehow translates into being with family more.
Ugh. I really shouldn’t be posting this week but since I’m here… someone somewhere is concerned with activity rates. The cynical nibbler translation of “keeping the Sabbath day holy” is:
What do we do to get butts in pews at church on Sunday?
Remind people they need to go to church on Sunday.
And “keeping the Sabbath day holy” becomes the shiny wrapper for reminding people that church is important.
Yuckie. I’ll try to be more cheery in the future.
:angel: On the Light the World Thread – I highlighted the Sabbath Observance one specifically for it’s out of the box suggestion because to me it highlighted ideas that can be used all year. Not just now. Quote:WAYS YOU CAN HELP OTHERS ON THE SABBATH
Service
How can you use your talents on a day of rest?
Donate the skills you use at work to bless someone’s life on your day off.
service
Is there a family member you could do better at keeping in touch with?
Get your family together this Sunday by hosting an event such as dinner or an online video chat. Include someone that may sometimes be forgotten.
service 3
How can you make better use of your time on Sundays?
Identify something from a church sermon that you can do to help someone in need today.
If I read these right you can help your neighbor build his fence on Sunday. That’s right throw on the work clothes and lift another’s burden. I host BBQ in the summer. Every Sunday. All my neighbors come. I have even mentioned it in Relief Society.
Yes Sabbathing is butt in the pew, too. 3 hours can kill me. But I do like a day where I can shut out other stuff, even for a few hours.
AmyJ wrote:
I was thinking about this the other day, and came up with a better question..“What
principlesshould govern my activities on Sunday?” Here is a short list I came up with:
Love– Showing love to family by creating quality family time activities – can be (but doesn’t have to be) cooking a meal together, watching an inspirational movie, going for a walk, playing a board game, visiting others. Each person and family will have different ways to show love.Renewal– Can be naps, reading a book, and a zillion other ideas. Sacred/Holy– Still working on ideas for this principle. I made time on Sunday to work on catching up on a spiritual journal I have. Because I am trying to sanctify my Sabbeth Observance, I switch to classical music or church music generally. We also play a lot of Christmas music on Sundays during the year.
I love these principle based thoughts. Thank you Amy.
mom3 wrote:If I read these right you can help your neighbor build his fence on Sunday. That’s right throw on the work clothes and lift another’s burden. I host BBQ in the summer. Every Sunday. All my neighbors come. I have even mentioned it in Relief Society.
Yes Sabbathing is butt in the pew, too. 3 hours can kill me. But I do like a day where I can shut out other stuff, even for a few hours.
I like this
:thumbup: Thanks!I strongly believe that a day of rest is a very good idea. To me that means a few simple things: 1) Reduce or eliminate making other people work. Other people also need a day of rest, although I realize this is impossible to do completely, so it’s really more of an goal to strive for.
2) Spending as much time as possible with my family. I swim on Sundays in my pool during the summer. Better than watching TV which is what we’d probably do otherwise. Game time with the family is (usually) tons of fun.
3) Giving my body physical rest. I enjoy exercise, but our bodies need a physical day of rest. I also try to sleep in on Sundays and it’s the only day of the week I get to.
Leaders asking us to keep the Sabbath Day holy while expecting hours and hours of meetings for some callings seems disingenuous to me.
Roadrunner wrote:
1) Reduce or eliminate making other people work. ……
Leaders asking us to keep the Sabbath Day holy while expecting hours and hours of meetings for some callings seems disingenuous to me.
Yes. We could do a better job of defining what it means to work. Nearly everything we do at church is said to be
the lord’swork while what we do on the other 6 days of the week is ourwork. Doing the lord’s work on Sunday is A-OK so we load it up with meetings and programs. But it makes for an exhausting Sunday if you ask me. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be at church for over 6 hours on Sundays. That was just the meetings, then there were the visits afterwards. The lord’s work felt more draining than what we traditionally identify as “work”… but I’m an introvert and social situations drain me. I don’t know how the church can minister to the introvert, they can’t seem to leave them well enough alone.
Some people are just of the personality that they just can’t sit still, can’t take a day off and do nothing. So…if we take a break from “work” … it is filled with other stuff we don’t consider “work”…like service or religious stuff. We make it “holy” by making it different from the other days.
My mom used to take our family out to dinner on sundays, because when she was young and her dad was SP and a GA came through…my grandma would work her butt off trying to get a real nice feast and foot to respect the GA…and it was so much work for a sunday that the GA just asked if they could go to town and get a burger and not make my grandma work. So my mom figured she should avoid her labors of a stay at home mom…and we would go get chinese food all the time.
I love that idea. I even thing more people are finding that preferable on Thanksgiving day…go out to eat and have no dishes and not all the prep work before hand…it leaves more family time.
Roadrunner wrote
Quote:
Leaders asking us to keep the Sabbath Day holy while expecting hours and hours of meetings for some callings seems disingenuous to me.My post mo husband recently had lunch with our Bishop. (I know signs of the times). The Bishop said our SP has given the Bishops an hours limit on their callings. The short version is no more than 2 days doing the calling. My husband laughed. But the Bishop said it really helps him prioritize what he does. Both the SP and the Bishop are new so it may not last forever, but I liked the attempt.
mom3 wrote:
Roadrunner wrote
Quote:
Leaders asking us to keep the Sabbath Day holy while expecting hours and hours of meetings for some callings seems disingenuous to me.My post mo husband recently had lunch with our Bishop. (I know signs of the times). The Bishop said our SP has given the Bishops an hours limit on their callings. The short version is no more than 2 days doing the calling. My husband laughed. But the Bishop said it really helps him prioritize what he does. Both the SP and the Bishop are new so it may not last forever, but I liked the attempt.
Our SP has done something similar. I don’t think he has put on an actual “hours limit” yet, but he has said no meetings or interviews after a certain time on Sunday (I think it’s 2:30) and that people should be home with their families during that time. He told the ARP group that currently meets on Sunday try to find a different day that works for everybody, and he has moved things like stake firesides and seminary graduation to days other than Sunday. We have discussed things to make calling less demanding several times in stake council in recent months and this idea is couched in counsel the SP is getting from higher up. I think the Brethren do recognize there’s too much going on and have a concern. Of course they could do their part in cutting programs too, including shortening the block. Our SP has lauded the every-other priesthood/womens meeting, but c’mon that’s two hours a year – we need more than that. At one of the aforementioned meetings a high councilor went over a list he made of all the programs that have been added and those eliminated since he was a kid – there’s way more new stuff than stuff we don’t do (self reliance, ARP, etc., included) – it was enlightening.
nibbler wrote:
The lord’s work felt more draining than what we traditionally identify as “work”… but I’m an introvert and social situations drain me. I don’t know how the church can minister to the introvert, they can’t seem to leave them well enough alone.
I saddle the line between introvert and extrovert, but with our second child I became much more introverted. My husband is very much an introvert, so it gets interesting. I have learned this year that there a price attached to socially interacting with people at church and related activities.
This group has taught me that there should be no stigma assigned to saying no to quasi-superfluous church social activities, and that it is a form of roulette as to whether others will judge us for our social-ness.
Interesting quasi-related story. There was a lot of disarray in information dissemination about our daughter’s baptism at the time that it would normally be announced to the branch – we had a Stake Conference the week before, and the leadership didn’t broadcast it before then. I thought about telling more people at the branch, but didn’t want to overdue the people situation at the baptism – and I honestly thought people wouldn’t care if there was a church activity that they did not attend – that their individual congratulations after the fact would be sufficient. I was also expecting the Mormon grapevine to carry the news effectively. Because there was a primary program practice right before the baptism, we had the majority of the primary and their parents there – the word got out. We had a good 30-40 people and kids there from the branch – and we had family in from out of state.
In the last 2 weeks, I have gotten not 1, but 2 direct comments from people who do not have primary children anymore along the lines of, “We wish we had known when your daughter was being baptized so we could be there.” Now either they are completing an unnecessary social lie (they really didn’t want to be there and are just saying words because it is an unwritten social rule and it makes them feel better. The lie is not necessary because I would not judge another person whether they were at my daughter’s baptism or not), or they genuinely would have liked to know when it was and been there.
I dislike the move to make all baptism of children of record on Stake baptism day. It seems to make it less personalized and more of an assembly line experience. Also it flies in the face of the council of previous prophets to have the children baptized on the date of their eighth birthday for precise obedience. OTOH, I can see where some wards having a baptism every week or even multiple a week would place an additional heavy burden upon the ward leadership.
From that perspective I can grudgingly understand the change.
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