Home & Blog | Lynne Baab

Sabbath Keeping a decade later: Stopping

Lynne Baab • Friday April 29 2016

A key to healthy Sabbaths comes from the root meaning of the word “Sabbath”: stop, pause, cease, desist, or rest. The heart of the Sabbath is stopping, not finding more things to do. Several people I know observe a Sabbath discipline of journaling, which has been a great gift to them. They record prayers and thoughts, and they try to use journaling as a way to listen to God. The center of this discipline is stopping long enough to listen and pray.

Patterns of Jewish Sabbath observance are very simple. The symbols of candles and braided bread on Friday evening are reminders...

Read full article »

Sabbath Keeping a decade later: gardening

Lynne Baab • Wednesday April 20 2016

A few years after my book Sabbath Keeping came out, I sat next to Rick at a church dinner. Rick is an attorney who works long hours, and I knew that he had grown up on a farm in the Midwest.

At some point during the dinner, he said, “I’ve been thinking about something related to the Sabbath. When I was growing up, my parents were very strict about Sundays. There were farm chores that had to be done every day, and of course we had to do those chores on Sunday. But other than that, no work. We were allowed to...

Read full article »

Sabbath Keeping a decade later: the first post of a series

Lynne Baab • Friday April 15 2016

About a year after my book Sabbath Keeping came out, I spoke about the Sabbath at a conference. After I spoke, the president of the organization sponsoring the conference came to talk to me. He said, “One of my favorite activities on the Sabbath is to go to the gym and lift weights.” If the central component of the Sabbath command is to stop working, how can working out at a gym be appropriate as a Sabbath activity?

He went on, “My work is so cognitive and so relational. I find I need to connect with God’s creation on my Sabbath day....

Read full article »

Spiritual practices for the Easter season

Lynne Baab • Wednesday April 6 2016

Did you know that in many times and places in Christian history, Easter has been viewed as a season, not just a day? The Easter season goes from Easter Day to Pentecost Sunday (May 15 this year), a period of seven weeks. Because Jesus’ resurrection is such a huge, amazing, overwhelming, fantastic gift to us, focusing on it for seven weeks allows time to ponder many aspects of what we receive on Easter Day.

The liturgical color for the Easter season is white to reflect the holiness and purity of Jesus, which enabled him to die in our place. White also symbolizes...

Read full article »