The Sabbath: A Palace in Time

He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our souls belong to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self....

-<>-

Labor is a craft, but perfect rest is an art. To attain a degree of excellence in art, one must accept its discipline, one must abjure slothfulness.

-<>-

We often feel how poor the edifice would be were it built exclusively of our rituals and deeds which are so awkward and often so obtrusive. How else to express glory in the presence of eternity, if not by the silence of abstaining from noisy acts?
-<>-
Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the granduer of what is Eternal in time.
-<>-
We must never forget that it is not the thing that lends significance to the moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things.
-<>-
The Sabbath teaches us that there is a holiness in and of time.
-<>-

The Sabbath is a santurary in time.

~Abraham Joshua Heschel~

A. Heschel is (2) people to the right of MLK in front row
------------------------------------

-Andy's Addendum-

Time is cathedral or church of moments. The Sabbath, or for Christian's The Lord's Day is a time/place set aside by God Himself as holy either by direct decree or by the work of Christ. It is the Holy of Holies in chronology. This makes time sacred and how we use it is imperative. What we do in this time dictates whether or not we glorify God or defame Him as Christians. When God saw all that He created and said it was "very good" He was also referring to time. Most agree that time did not exist before the Creation at least not the way humans understand it. It is after the creation that we see linear sequences of events or time unfold as we understand it. Even though God sees all of time as a whole "now", man cannot. It is my belief that time is indeed sanctified. This is especially true of the time we spend in worship of a holy timeless God...and we will have eternity to do so.

I completely and highly recommend Abraham Joshua Heschel's book The Sabbath. It will change your life and change how you view the Church, the time you spend in humblness before God and other human beings. I will not numerically rate this book because the quotes above stand on their own merit. It is a very short book perhaps a hundred pages. Read it.