Thoughtful About . . . the Sabbath

by Roseanna White | Feb 6, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized

A Wet Sunday Morning  by Edmund Blair Leighton

I am a Sabbath keeper.

I don’t talk about it much online because, well, it doesn’t come up a whole lot. But it’s something I make sure those I work with know, since they’re unlikely to have their questions answered by me on Saturday, but will find me hard at work on Sundays. Today, though, I want to talk about it.

Last Saturday, my dad (pastor at my Seventh Day Baptist church), preached on the Sabbath. He doesn’t do this often, but it’s a topic we’ve discussed quite a bit in church for obvious reasons, and I was curious what else he could find to say about it. His message really intrigued me. And made me want to proclaim that yes, I keep the Sabbath.

He read from Exodus, but not the part I expected. Before, we’ve focused our attention on the verse in the Ten Commandments. This time, he read from a later section of Moses’s tenure on Mt. Sinai, in chapter 31.

Surely
My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you
throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. 14 You
shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is holy to you.

I’ve read Exodus quite a few times, but I’d never noticed that before. And I loved the context Dad gave it. Back in that day, the sun was the center of worship in nearly all major religions. The chief god of most pantheons is represented by the sun. So from the dawn of time, more or less, there was a day named after it, the first day of the week. That was the day when most people in the ancient world worshiped.


God wanted something different for His people. He wanted them to be set apart. So worshiping instead on the last day of the week was an outward sign. It was a clear statement that they belonged to the living God. The God who is not represented by the sun, but who created it. That’s pretty cool, right? The Jewish day of worship is a testament, and a covenant. It’s a sign not just for man, but between man and God. It’s His people saying, “Yes, Lord, here I am to worship!”


I’ve heard a lot of reasoning for why Christians worship on Sunday, and most of it comes down to tradition. In the first church, most of the believers were still Jewish, and they would still go to the temple on the Sabbath. They would therefore gather with the Christians the following day. Okay. I’m totally cool with that. But as with many of our holidays, it became the “official” day of worship when Constantine made it the official Roman religion. He wanted it to palatable to his people, so he said they shouldn’t change their day of worship.


Now, I’m the first to say that our day or worship is by no means a matter of salvation. That starts and ends with belief in Christ. I totally understand that we live in a society that really doesn’t care anymore about religious days, and we could lose our jobs sometimes if we insisted on a particular day off. I understand that for most people, the thought of changing from Sunday to Saturday just doesn’t make sense in their heads. Isn’t Sunday the Lord’s day? The day Jesus rose from the dead?


Yes, it’s the day He rose from the dead. But the disciples still called Saturday “the Lord’s day.” But didn’t He free us from those laws and rules?


He freed us from the judgment of them, yes. And redefined the ceremonial laws. But the order to keep the Sabbath is one of the Ten Commandments. I’m not sure why Christianity has decided to toss number 4 out the window but insist that the other 9 must be followed out of loving obedience. We don’t think murdering or adultery is right…so why do we forget the one the we were told to remember? It’s not a ceremonial law, it’s a moral one.


And as I sat in church last Saturday, I realized why it’s a moral one. Because it marks us as God’s. That’s something I wouldn’t trade for the world.


Now, I know this post is unlikely to change anything for anyone, LOL. Most Christians will still go to church on Sunday, and that’s totally fine. Again, it’s not a matter of salvation. I certainly don’t judge anyone for following centuries-long tradition. But I just wanted to publicly claim my covenant with God. I am choosing, now as I first did ten years ago, to remember the Sabbath. I am choosing to keep it holy. Because He is the God who sanctifies me, and this is the day He set aside.


I am a Sabbath keeper.

Thoughtful About . . . Distance

by Roseanna White | Jan 23, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized

I’ve been writing for a long time. As in, a long time. I finished my first novel at age 13. My second at 16. Then six more by the time I was 21. That’s a lot of words on the page. A lot of plot. A lot of characters to come to love. And I always had the goal of getting published. Putting those stories into the world.

That means criticism.

Now, no matter what you do in life, you’re going to come up against criticism. But me…I wasn’t so good at taking it, and I can admit that now that I’m old (ahem) and wise (cough, cough). 😉 Even when it was a simple matter of needing to trim a few scenes, I couldn’t do it. I was too attached. I loved every word. I mean, if I read through something all on my own and saw a mistake or a way to make a sentence sound better, sure. I’d change it. But on someone else’s advice?

Nuh uh. No way.

Yeah…I had some work to do, LOL. I formed a critique group, and that helped so much. My internal protests to every suggestion quickly shrank from a day to a minute to a few seconds’ debate. I learned to measure and weigh advice.

I learned to adopt a distance between me and my work. To realize that my book wasn’t me. An attack on something I created (not that my critique partners attacked! But looking forward here to reviews…) was not an attack on my person.

Distance. It’s the friend of a writer. It’s the friend of everyone when it comes to these situations. It’s so easy to take things personally, but what does that lead to? Hurt feelings. Offense. Division. It happens in friendships, families, churches.

Lately, I’ve thought that I have distance pretty well down. Mastered. I invest my heart in my books while I write them, then I put them down. I walk away. And I approach all else about them with what I figured was healthy detachment. Changes to a book? In my whole direction? In what project I’m working on? I can do that. Why not. No problem.

But here’s the thing…when one has “mastered” distance, sometimes it masters you. Sometimes you look at everything with that lens. Sometimes you stop investing altogether. And that can’t be good. Because hope, faith, and detachment are a strange combination. And when that last one has the upper hand, you don’t always even realize if the other two have faded.

In this balancing act we call life, it seems like something or another is always out of whack, doesn’t it? We always have work to do. Right now, part of mine is in finding this particular equilibrium. In making sure that keeping a distance from my work doesn’t turn into keeping a distance from faith that God’s working through it.

I definitely need some space between me and the things of my hands. But between me and the work God’s doing in me–no. That I need to embrace fully. That I need to hold close. That I need to be protective of. So that I can still hope…not in a particular outcome, but in the One who’s controlling it.

Thoughtful About . . . Prayer

by Roseanna White | Jan 16, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized

by Jean-François Millet Angelus, 1859

Prayer.

It’s one of those things that believers know we need. It’s communion. It’s supplication. It’s worship.

It’s crucial. Vital.

And hard for me to find the time to engage in.

That sounds awful, and is awful. But it’s true, and I suspect I’m not the only busy parent who encounters this. I can find time every day to read my Bible, because whenever a little one comes up and interrupts me, it’s just a matter of finding my place again and continuing. But when prayer is interrupted (which it always is), it’s a little harder to get back to.

Sometimes I journal my prayers, and that works well…until I can’t find a pen or misplace my notebook. Which happens, LOL.

But one of my resolutions this year was to spend more time in prayer. And so, each day, I’m trying.

Usually, it looks like this. The kids run out of the room on some search, and I whisper to the Lord the thoughts weighing on my mind. It lasts about half a minute, before the little ones come tearing back in. Or I’m in the shower. Shower has become prayer time. It’s the only solid 15 minutes I have in a day without guaranteed interruptions, so I’ve made a concerted effort to use it for that God time.

And mostly, I’m trying to listen. You know those times you get that feeling? I’m making a conscious decision to heed those.

Like last week, when I got that feeling that I should fill up the water jugs. We have a well, so no electricity = no water. It was supposed to be colder than it had been in 20 years, and windy. So I filled up the jugs. And I prayed the Lord would keep us warm. And I knew–knew–we’d lose power.

It went out at 3 a.m. and didn’t come back on until twelve hours later. The house had dropped down to just under 50 degrees, but we had water. And we kept warm enough. And I thanked God for that warning whisper.

I’ve also found myself praying very pointedly lately. Like, when praying for a new opportunity, being very specific in what I hope for and when I hope for it. These prayers always feel a little strange to me, and I tend to hedge them with, “You know…maybe…if this is Your will…” But they also feel right. And they keep proving themselves. Twice now in the last couple weeks these very-specific prayers have yielded very-specific, very quick results.

When I think of prayer, I often think of Jewel of Persia. My heroine had a prayer life I aspire to, yet which feels very out of reach to me. She, after all, had servants to help her out, LOL. But though I can’t feasibly spend hours on my knees before the Lord, I can give Him my all. I can trust Him fully to deliver what’s best for me. And yes, I can listen.

And when I listen…well, I won’t say nothing ever catches me by surprise. But a lot less has lately. Good news and bad have been more a “Okay…yep…that’s what God was saying, all right” than a “Wha????”

I’ve got a lot of growing to do here yet. A lot. But I love these lessons. I love crawling up into the lap of my God and knowing He’s holding me tight. I love pausing, stopping, and getting that feeling. I love knowing it’s my heavenly Father, guiding me through my every day.

I love having prayer in my life. And I’m so, so grateful that my Lord loves it too.

Thoughtful About . . . Trusting, This New Year

by Roseanna White | Jan 2, 2014 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized

I know, I know, I’m a day late. 😉 But since that free novella went live yesterday, I had to feature it on the 1st. So I’ll get thoughtful today on the day designated for it instead.

Well, here we are. In 2014. Xoe made sure I put up the new calendar at the first possible moment yesterday, the old one tucked away. Another year to fade into the annals of history. (And I do love history…)

2013 was a busy, crazy year. It had some major disappointments and some major successes. We moved. Rowyn started kindergarten. WhiteFire put out a record number of books and contracted an equally huge number for 2014. I as an author had releases every 6 months, plus two free novellas. Yep. Busy.

But do you know what moments stick out most to me? Realizing how brave my beautiful little girl was in the face of a broken elbow. Hearing a group of ladies in Massachusetts open their hearts to me after reading A Stray Drop of Blood, showing me anew how God can use those words we put to page for His amazing purposes. Taking a walk with my family one evening and realizing that God was preparing us for some big changes…and then knowing, the moment those changes pummeled me, that yeah, He had it in His hand all along, and He has me there too.

It was a year of uncontained giggles from my kids, of a few storms of tears. It was a year of the bittersweet…and a year to trust.

And I think that’ll be even more true of 2014. When I prayed for a word for this new year, that was the first one that sprang to mind, though I’m not totally sure it was His voice–I was so tired yesterday, I can’t be sure of much, LOL. But it feels right today, so we’ll see if I get any clearer direction, or if that’s it.

Trust.

Sometimes that can be a scary command. If God is telling me to trust Him, then it might mean some questionable situations are on the horizon, ones where I’d be tempted to doubt. Or maybe it means new opportunities are coming. Or…or…or… 😉

I can’t really know that. But I can be sure that, just as in the year past, He’ll lead me through it. That no matter my feelings on one day or another, He’ll be steady. That no matter how something might look to my human eyes, He knows what I need to travel His path.

I used to make resolutions as a kid, the kind that were actual achievable goals. I remember the year that Finish my book was on the top of my list–and I achieved it, at age 13. I want to set some goals this year too, but more the kind to help me spiritually, so that no matter what else comes up, I’ll be ready.

1. Spend more time in prayer
2. Be more patient with the kiddos
3. Make a smile my first reaction
4. Serve–and serve happily, be it my family or strangers

What goals are you setting for the new year? Or what word has the Lord whispered to guide you through 2014?