Important—though unperceived—Sabbath blessings

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the October 1984 Conference.

I always like Elder John H. Groberg's talks. I recognized one of the stories from this one, so either I heard it somewhere else or it made an impression on me even as a four-year-old! (I bet I read it in his book.) Anyway, one thing I loved was how he speaks of commandments. If you were asked the question "Why does God give commandments," what would you answer? I wouldn't have thought of putting it this way, but it's beautiful:

…He gives us commandments so he can bless us as we keep them and thereby have joy.

Elder Groberg's talk is about the specific commandment to keep the Sabbath Day holy, which is obviously an emphasis we've had in the church forever, but I feel like I personally really re-committed to the principle about 6 years ago, when Sam was the Gospel Doctrine teacher and gave a really good lesson on it. Then there was President Nelson's talk in 2015. That made me wonder what was so central about Sabbath Day observance, to make President Nelson emphasize it when there was so much else wrong with the world. And I guess I've been growing in the principle ever since—and the Sabbath has become more and more of a delight to me. It's pretty amazing to look back and see how that weekly respite has grown in importance in my life.

So it's interesting, in that context, to look back to this 1984 talk and see that there's nothing new about the counsel—but also to feel how relevant and urgent it comes across to me today:

Does the Lord love and bless those who keep the Sabbath day holy? I testify that he does in eternally meaningful ways. I further testify that when we eventually see things through the proper perspective of eternal truth, we will be amazed at how much we were blessed in important—though often unperceived—ways through keeping the Sabbath holy; and to our sorrow we may sense how many blessings we kept from ourselves by not consistently keeping the Sabbath day holy.

I still have a long way to go in fully hallowing the Sabbath. It often feels like the children are at their very worst on Sundays—and we all know that Sundays can be long and busy days. It's pretty obvious that the "day of rest" is supposed to be more about resting from a specific sort of weariness than it is resting from everything. But I'm consistently grateful for that specific rest. Rest from the online world, rest from the weekday routine, rest from making certain choices. To take up my "Sunday burdens" and lay aside my other ones is a particularly refreshing type of rest, and it's one that's becoming more and more meaningful to me. I'm so curious to know which other blessings I'm being given that are directly tied to the Sabbath day without me knowing it! And it makes me want to do even better so that I can access even more of those readily-available blessings from the Lord.


Other posts in this series:

Growing in grace on the Sabbath Day—by G
Are we really living the gospel of Jesus Christ?—by Jan Tolman