Receiving the Day Quotes

“For all Christians, baptism embodies release from yesterday's sin and receipt of tomorrow's promise: going under the water, the old self is buried in the death of Christ; rising from the water the self is new, joined to the resurrected Christ.”
― Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time

“In exploring practices dealing with time ... we have encountered other Christian practices at every turn ... "The sabbath cannot live in exile, a lonely stranger among days of profanity ... The sabbath needs the companionship of all the other days (Abraham Joshua Heschel).”
― Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time

“[In the image of God] Our bodies move to a rhythm of work and rest that follows the rhythm originally strummed by God on the waters of creation. As God worked, so shall we; as God rested, so shall we. Working and resting we who are human are in the image of God. At the same time, remembering the holiness of the day also reminds us that we are not God: this is a commandment, not a polite invitation. Though we are made to do good work and to enjoy consecrated rest, we can be the makers of neither commandments nor days. These we receive.”
― Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time

“The Christian practice of receiving the day is made for people who have and are bodies. These bodies will operate, for awhile, on mere fuel ... but these bodies cry out for something better than fuel: they cry out for care, for nourishment, for exercise, for rest.”
― Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time

“Eugene Peterson urges ... attention to the wisdom of Genesis .... Perceiving day's beginning at the darkening point teaches something important about who we are as human beings, he says. "The Hebrew evening / morning sequence conditions us to the rhythms of grace. We go to sleep, and God begins his work.”
― Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time

“Like, so many images of God, this one [Ps. 90 - our shelter from the stormy blast of time] is both true and limited. In Christian faith, God is immortal. God was before time, and God will outlast time. But God's immortality is not flexed as a command to human beings to fly away from time into something bitter. Nor is God a deus ex machina intent on plucking us out of everyday life and placing us in a realm of "nontime" somehow higher or better than what is available in the ordinariness of years, weeks, and days. Quite the contrary: it is within time itself that God meets us.”
― Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time