Sabbath Keeping

 

 ~ Lebanon, VA ~

 "May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you." ~ I Thessalonians 3:12 ~

"....how sometimes we have dreamed of a better state of things in which each man's independence should make the brotherhood of all men perfect.

....Must we wait for such a society as that until we get to heaven?

Surely not!

....We may begin it in ourselves. Already we may give ourselves to Christ. We may own that we are His. We may see in all our bodily life--in the strength and glory of our youth if we are young and strong, in the weariness and depression of our age or feebleness if we are old and feeble--the marks of His ownership, the signs that we are His. We may wait for His coming to claim us, as the marked tree back in the woods waits till the ship-builder who has stuck his sign into it with his axe comes by and by to take it and make it part of the great ship that he is buildling. And while we wait we may make the world stronger by being our own, and sweeter by being our brethren's; and both, because and only because we are really not our own nor theirs, but Christ's."

~ Phillips Brooks ~ author, O Little Town of Bethlehem

"No man ever saw God and lived"; and yet I shall not live till I see God; and when I have seen Him I shall never die. What have I ever seen in this world that hath been truly the same thing that it seemed to me? I have seen marble buildings, and a chip, a crust, a plaster, a face of marble hath peeled off, and I see brick-bowels within. I have seen beauty, and a strong breath from another tells me that complexion is from without, not from a sound constitution within. I have seen the state of princes, and all that is but ceremony; and I would be loath to put a master of ceremonies to define ceremony and tell me what it is, and to include so various a thing as ceremony in so constant a thing as a definition. I see a great officer, and I see a man of mine own profession, of great revenues, and I see not the interest of the money that was paid for it, I see not the pensions nor the annuities that are charged upon that office or that church. As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else. When we shall see God sicuti est, as He is, we shall see all things sicuti sunt, as they are; for that's their essence, as they conduce to His glory. We shall be no more deluded with outward appearances: for when this sight which we intend here comes, there will be no delusory thing to be seen. All that we have made as though we saw in this world will be vanished, and I shall see nothing but God, and what is in Him."
~ John Donne ~

"We who in a mystery represent the Cherubim and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life giving Trinity: Let us lay aside the cares of this world; for now we are to receive the King of all who comes accompanied by unseen hosts of anglels, Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."
~ Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom ~

"For great is your love toward me: you have delivered me from the depths of the grave." 

~ Psalms 86:13 ~

 Blessings ~ Sabbath ~ great love ~ Jesus Christ ~ "As he that fears God fears nothing else, so he that sees God sees everything else" ~

Dei Gratia,
Sandra