{"id":48,"date":"2013-11-07T12:17:40","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T12:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/?p=48"},"modified":"2013-11-09T04:20:56","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T04:20:56","slug":"precious-sabbath-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/07\/precious-sabbath-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Precious Sabbath Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sundays are a gift like no other for me! Because I can be such a spastic brained person, my life is hugely blessed by the weekly occurrence of the Sabbath. It sets aside a time and space to refocus and recommit to the things I value most. (One of the chapters in my <i>Confessions<\/i> book addresses my feelings\u2014past and present\u2014about Sundays.)<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago\u00a0I was sitting in church with an adorable little granddaughter crawling up and over and around me. Her contagious giggle and bursts of speed crawling always delight me, but they can be rather distracting in church. I sang the sacrament hymn while doing what I could to help contain and quiet this busy child, so the first half of the sacrament came and went in a blur. But then she wandered down the row to her mother and I automatically bowed my head in anticipation when it was time for the prayer over the water. As the words, \u201cOh God, the Eternal Father,\u201d were spoken, time suddenly seemed to stand still. A flood of gratitude pulsed through me. \u201cOh, God, Our Eternal Father! What a blessing that we can connect with You in this symbolic way!\u201d Christ gave us the pattern and invites us to come to His table each week to demonstrate our desire to have our lives filled with His spirit. It\u2019s easy to partake, but not so easy to internalize the profound significance of this weekly ritual.<\/p>\n<p>Those closest to me know that I love rousing, joyful church music, and that I think we miss something wonderful if we don\u2019t frequently rejoice\u2014with some serious enthusiasm J\u2014in God\u2019s amazing goodness. However, this quiet Sabbath moment was not a moment for that kind of rejoicing. It was a precious moment of pure worship. It called for me to \u201cfall on my knees\u201d rather than \u201cshout the glad rejoicings.\u201d I thought about the scripture that says there is time and a season for every purpose under heaven. This was indeed a sacred time, a quickly passing moment of tender devotion. I\u2019m grateful for this simple reminder of the things I value most! Nothing is sweeter than clearly sensing God\u2019s presence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sundays are a gift like no other for me! Because I can be such a spastic brained person, my life is hugely blessed by the weekly occurrence of the Sabbath. It sets aside a time and space to refocus and recommit to the things I value most. (One of the chapters in my Confessions book [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sunday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elonashelley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}