Isaiah 58:13-14 — If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

I haven’t been moved to write one of my “Sunday / Sabbath / Lord’s Day” Devotions for a while, but today has seemed very sweet, and I wanted to talk about how blessed this day can be.
I have two places where I have my quiet time — usually inside on weekdays, or outside on our lanai at weekends.
I’d prefer always to be outside, but during the week it’s just too loud, even at 5:30 in the morning. Yesterday and today, however, I could sit outside — and I was blessed by some moments of rare peace.
Yesterday, there was a moment — just a moment — of magical calm, that washed over me. Everything was quiet, the wind was gone, the sun was at just that height that cast a golden glow, and the wind sighed through the trees and, for a moment I felt that I was in the Lord’s presence.
This morning the glory of creation was impressed on me even more firmly. As I looked across the pond (officially it’s a “lake”, but if I can see into a neighbors backyard I reckon it’s a pond!) I saw two Great Egret’s roosting and a Little Blue Heron fishing … And then this years duck family passed by in fleet review … The glory of The Lord settled on me for a few short moments. It was wonderful, though not entirely comfortable.
For some moments a few of the things I long for in my quiet time happened. I saw myself, and my sin, a little as God might see me. You won’t be surprised (I wasn’t too surprised) to see that I was a little small, and a little shabby. It didn’t distress me. In fact my confession was more cleansing than it often is. The happy state persisted for twenty minutes or so, and then the unusual morning quiet was broken as the dog across the pond started to bark, the egrets took fright and flew away, the heron followed and fleet passed on.
My worship this morning was made sweeter by the earlier quiet time. Spending the rest of the day doing nothing that might be reckoned as “regular employment” has helped me keep a quiet spirit all day. This Sabbath has been a delight!