God's Sabbath

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E NTERING INTO G OD ’ S S ABBATH R EST

these means communion with God is actually established. It is quite common for people who give no thought to God and His truth, to spend time strolling in parks, forests, or by the sea, on Sabbath afternoon. They are enjoying the peace and beauty of nature and it is good for them, but one can hardly conclude that they are truly observing the Sabbath. We should aim to hear God speaking to us throughout the Sab bath day. So vast is the gulf established by sin that it is difficult for humanity to hear the heavenly voices through the medium of nature, but it is important that this capacity is developed. Those who set out to achieve this usually find the initial re sults so discouraging that they feel the quest is hopeless and tend to give up right there and then. It is much the same as when we arrive in a foreign land for the first time. We are sur rounded by people speaking to one another in their own lan guage, which is completely unintelligible to us. We decide that we must learn the language, but the words are so unfamiliar and difficult, the grammar so complicated, and the vocabulary so large, that we feel the task is impossible. However, if we doggedly persist in our pursuit of learning, we will find that as the months go by, we learn more and more. We will finally be able to communicate on a limited basis, and eventually with full fluency. Likewise, when we first seek to enter into communion with nature on the Sabbath day, the results are totally disappointing. We feel that while we enjoy and admire God’s created handi work, there is no positive communication. We have come with the mistaken idea that we will experience complete fellowship from the first moment, forgetting that no one is an instant vir tuoso. The reaction is to abandon the task right there and then, instead of remembering that no language is understood or learned on first contact. There is no need to be surprised and disappointed that so lit tle communication is achieved the first day. This is quite natu ral. We must return again the next Sabbath and every one thereafter, with the determination that even though it is a long, hard task, achievement where full communion with God through His created works will be established, lies at the end of it.