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New every morning is your love, great God of light, and all day long you are working for good in the world. Stir up in us desire to serve you, to live peacefully with our neighbors and all your creation, and to devote each day to your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

"A Liturgy for Morning Prayer," Upper Room Worshipbook

Used by permission from the Book of Common Worship, © 2018 Westminster John Knox Press. All rights reserved. This prayer appears in “A Liturgy for Morning Prayer” in Upper Room Worshipbook.

 

Today’s Reflection

When free time yields to sabbath—unplanned sacred time for rest, worship, or gathered community—our worlds are turned upside down, and we feel uncomfortable. Sabbath practices are not what our culture or economy teaches us to do with our time. Observing sabbath is scary because it means slowing down to examine what we’re doing with our lives, why we’re doing it, and who we are. Sabbath, when practiced regularly, makes us realize what we’ve called “living” isn’t actually living at all.

—J. Dana Trent, For Sabbath’s Sake: Embracing Your Need for Rest, Worship, and Community (Upper Room Books, 2017)

Today’s Question

What feelings arise when you try to practice the counter-cultural ways of sabbath? Join the conversation.

Today’s Scripture

If you stop trampling the Sabbath,
stop doing whatever you want on my holy day,
and consider the Sabbath a delight,
sacred to the LORD, honored,
and honor it instead of doing things your way,
seeking what you want and doing business as usual,
then you will take delight in the LORD.

—Isaiah 5813-14a (CEB)

Prayer for the Week

O God, our Creator and Redeemer, help me to realize my need for sabbath time in my busy life. Please give me a hunger for sabbath time so I can spend more time with you, my family, and my faith community. Amen.
Submit your prayer to The Upper Room.

Something More

SABBATH: An Ancient Practice Meets the Modern World is a new two-hour documentary that explores the history of one of the world’s most important spiritual practices and its timeless relevance for a stressed-out, modern world. This week’s featured author, J. Dana Trent, is one of the featured commentators in the film. Learn more at www.journeyfilms.com.

Lectionary Readings

(Courtesy of Vanderbilt Divinity Library)

Trinity Sunday

Looking for lectionary-based resources? Learn more about The Upper Room Disciplines.

2 Comments

  • Gail Posted June 2, 2023 7:08 am

    Perhaps I need to watch the featuredovie. Discussions always end up, going out to eat on Sunday causes people to work! The focus should be on my own conduct, what I actually have control over.

  • Julie Posted June 2, 2023 9:30 am

    I feel condemned by these reflections. I understand the sentiment, but for those who have responsibilities during the week with only the weekend to catch up on chores, shopping and participating in leisure activities such as sports or viewing sporting events or ferrying children to their sporting events or playdates, etc, etc. It just seems impossible. Also, its difficult to entice people into church at all and help them to become invested in their faith. To then impose a moratorium on all activity save religious would have them running in the opposite direction. I agree, looking to my own actions is desirable but I only get Sunday as my one day a week “off duty” as a caregiver. As a caregiver, no day is completely free of my responsibities. So again, to tell myself and others who are caregivers that they should “observe the sabbath” is antithetical to “helping the least of these!”

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