Sabbath

The Sabbath. A day of rest. A day off work. Time to attend church and time with family. What else can you make of it?

For me, the Sabbath was a welcomed day of worship and rest. Spend time at church to learn and teach the Gospel of Christ. Take the sacrament to remember Christ's Atonement. Ask for forgiveness and recommit to our baptismal promises. After church, come home and eat with the family. Then unwind by taking a nap, watching a family show, or spending time on the computer.

There are definitely more service-oriented tasks I could do after church, but my mindset leaned towards eating, family, and rest. Until I discovered a meditative style of prayer. I spent more time on each prayer and so deepened my relationship with God. Now on Sunday, I tried to only DO and THINK what would be respectful to Him. I would only consume Gospel literature, shows, or websites. That would mean breaking many old phone, TV, and computer habits. The first two Sundays, felt very boring. I could no longer join all my family activities as I was not going to force them into my strict Sunday regimen. They understood it as another "Dad experiment".

By the fourth Sunday, I started to think maybe I was doing it all wrong. After we got home from church, I blankly sat at my desk and asked God, "What would You have me do?" My first impression was about recent Christ print donations to local missionaries and church members. Somehow putting that online so anyone can get my free Christ pictures for their home seemed important to me. That would mean a new custom website and a lot of work. Not wanting to take that website project on, I was mentally dragging my feet trying to think of other things to do. Eventually, I mused, let's see what SEO keywords I would even target. The only keyword phrase that worked was "Jesus Christ Art". All the rest seemed wrong.

Still dragging my feet, but curious about what domains might work with that keyword phrase. I searched various christ, print, artwork, etc. domain combinations for almost an hour. Nothing good was available. Maybe use His entire name in the domain - was that sacrilege? I searched "jesuschrist" options.

Here is where it gets good. The ONLY domain not purchased was, you guessed it... the exact keyword phrase I was originally targeting - jesus christ art. I said out loud, 'Okay, I will build you a website.' It could not be any clearer.

Never has a website come together so fast for me. It only took a couple of days to get this site up from start to finish. It is a simple static missionary site for anyone to download and share my two free Christ pictures I drew over 40 years ago. No strings attached. I also included my testimony of why I drew each one. The website is left open to the world with no location exclusions - and in God's hands when searching for free Jesus Christ art.

A month later, I felt inspired to add a safe space to expand my testimony of God and Jesus Christ, for those interested. I call it my "Inspiration Library". It only me took a 3 weeks to build and write, and I don't like to write. These two simple websites are small fish in the massive internet ocean. If they help one person to start praying to God and remember Jesus Christ... it was worth it.

Soon after, I was inspired to create new images of Jesus Christ. These took many months to complete with over 100 iterations for each image. And finally, added an editable church invite and bookmark. Again, not something I was planning or even wanted to do. Had I not committed to keep the Sabbath Day holy, none of this would have happened. His inspired motivation was far beyond me and a Sabbath experience I will never forget. Imagine what our Heavenly Father has planned for your Sundays when you ask "What would You have me do?"

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.