My Favorite Quotes on Sabbath

“[Sabbath] is a small yet ample chuck of space, a narrow yet full segment of time.  In it you can lie down and rest.  From it, you can rise up and go – stronger, lighter, ready to work again with vigor and a clear mind.  It is room enough, time enough, in which to relinquish all encumbrances, to act as though their existence has nothing whatsoever to do with your own.  It is an invitation, at one and the same time, to empty yourself and fill yourself.” – Mark Buchannan, from The Rest of God (2006, W Publishing Group)

 

“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 soul belongs to Someone Else.” – Abraham Heschel, from The Sabbath (1951)

 

“It is a day on which we…turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the [Creator] of the world.” – Abraham Heschel, from The Sabbath (1951)