What to Do on the Sabbath

One of the decisions that we are faced with each week as disciples of Christ is how we are going to spend the Sabbath Day.  It is certainly up to each of us to determine what it is we will do on the Sabbath to honor the Lord, but we do have guidance from the scriptures and living prophets that helps us see that which will be of most worth to us to do.  The most important item, of course, is worshiping the Lord at church and partaking of the Sacrament.  In our dispensation the Lord made this clear: “And that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day” (D&C 59:9).  There is little argument among members of the church that participating in our meetings and partaking of the Sacrament are essential Sabbath.  There is less consensus, though, on how we should spend the rest of Sabbath.  But as we study the scriptures and the teachings of modern prophets the kinds of things we should and shouldn’t participate in on the Sabbath become very clear. 

               In my mind the words of Isaiah help us best frame a discussion about Sabbath Day activities.  He wrote, “If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord” (Isaiah 58:13-14).  The key message here as I read it is that we should sacrifice what we want to do (“thy own pleasure”) and instead do those things that “honour him.”  As we think about our Sabbath Day observance, if there isn’t some level of sacrifice, some decision to not do things we would otherwise want to do, then we probably need to reevaluate our activities.  President Nelson put it this way: “Not pursuing your ‘own pleasure’ on the Sabbath requires self-discipline. You may have to deny yourself of something you might like. If you choose to delight yourself in the Lord, you will not permit yourself to treat it as any other day. Routine and recreational activities can be done some other time.” It’s fairly easy to justify just about any activity as being appropriate for the Sabbath (there is always some extenuating circumstance that we can call upon for justification), but if we do that enough we will have gotten rid of all sacrifices associated with keeping His day holy.  President Monson told the story of Clayton Christensen who received enormous pressure in college to help his basketball team play their championship game which was on Sunday, but he refused and chose to keep the Sabbath Day holy.  President Monson summarized, “Brother Christensen has said that as time has passed, he considers it one of the most important decisions he ever made. It would have been very easy to have said, ‘You know, in general, keeping the Sabbath day holy is the right commandment, but in my particular extenuating circumstance, it’s okay, just this once, if I don’t do it.’ However, he says his entire life has turned out to be an unending stream of extenuating circumstances, and had he crossed the line just that once, then the next time something came up that was so demanding and critical, it would have been so much easier to cross the line again.”  We have to learn to avoid the temptation to justify behaviors based on “unique” circumstance or we may find that just about everything is one. 

               President Kimball gave us this invitation about the Sabbath, “I … would urge upon all Saints everywhere a more strict observance of the Sabbath day. The Lord’s holy day is fast losing its sacred significance throughout the world. … More and more, man destroys the Sabbath’s sacred purposes in pursuit of wealth, pleasure, recreation, and the worship of false and material gods. We continue to urge all Saints and God-fearing people everywhere to observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Businesses will not be open on the Sabbath if they are not patronized on that holy day. The same is true of resorts, sporting events, and recreation areas of all kinds. Pursuit of the almighty dollar is winning, it seems, over the Lord’s commandment, ‘Keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary’ (Lev. 19:30).”   President Hinckley spoke similar words: “The Sabbath of the Lord is becoming the play day of the people. It is a day of golf and football on television, of buying and selling in our stores and markets. Are we moving to mainstream America as some observers believe? In this I fear we are. What a telling thing it is to see the parking lots of the markets filled on Sunday in communities that are predominately LDS. Our strength for the future, our resolution to grow the Church across the world, will be weakened if we violate the will of the Lord in this important matter.”  The kinds of activities that we should not be involved in are fairly clear from President Kimball and President Hinckley, but if we focus only on that then we have missed the point.  The Sabbath is not about what we don’t do; it’s about what we do.  We are to make the Sabbath holy, meaning at least in part that we treat it as something special, something different, something sacred.  There is so much good to do on the Sabbath Day—from studying the scriptures, writing in a journal, visiting the sick, praying, listening to the words of modern prophets, participating in sacred music, to simply letting the “solemnities of eternity rest upon [our] minds”—that if we truly make it holy there simply won’t be time left over to make it unholy (D&C 43:34).