Keeping the Sabbath Wholly Quotes

“A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us — not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“If we lived more simply most of the time, our feasts would be distinctive events. As it is, since most Americans have all kinds of special things to eat every day, for many the only way to make Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts uncommon is by eating more. It would be good if we could restore the concept of feasting not as something to regret (don’t we all have to lose a few pounds after the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s season?), but as a delight.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“Our negative ceasing to possess must be accompanied by a positive choosing to be generous.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“We definitely do not conform to our culture if we choose not to be dominated by possessions or by the anxiety to acquire more of them, but decide instead to give away much of what we have and use what we have been given as good stewards who desire to enjoy the things of God for the purposes of God.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“Grant, O heavenly Father, that the spiritual refreshment I have this day enjoyed may not be left behind and forgotten as tomorrow I return to the cycle of common tasks. Here is a fountain of inward strength. Here is a purifying wind that must blow through all my business and all my pleasures. Here is light to enlighten all my road. Therefore, O God, do Thou enable me so to discipline my will that in hours of stress I may honestly seek after those things for which I have prayed in hours of peace.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“The important point in all our imitation [of God] is its deliberate intentionality. We don’t just think God’s values are good. We embrace them wholly.... To embrace is to accept with gusto, to live to the hilt, to choose with extra intentionality and tenacity. —Marva Dawn”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“Joy born of deep suffering is nourished by moments of celebration.... Celebration properly understood is the acceptance of life in an ever growing recognition that it is so precious.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting

“To say “I am going to church” both reveals and promotes bad theology.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting