Like many other Americans, my husband and I are hard working people. We were also both raised as Christians although through our teen years and as we grew into adulthood together, I’m ashamed to admit that our faith fell by the wayside while we pursued our dreams. We didn’t observe the sabbath, the better part of a decade went by since the last time I had attended a bible reading, we lived together for three years before we finally got married in a civic ceremony (nowhere near a church). I remember my grandmother coming up to us at the reception. She was happy for me, but also saddened by what my husband and I had turned our backs on. She hugged me, wished my husband well, handed me a small, plain gift and returned to her table. The gift turned out to be her copy of the new testament, a copy that she had carried with her for many years. Clearly the gift meant a lot to her. Still we ignored what was likely in our hearts the whole time and instead went about our lives.

We both lived to work and used our considerable earnings to take sun-soaked vacations that, in hindsight, were an incredible example of excess. Partying and drinking to all hours, buying expensive souvenirs and knick-knacks, then back into the plane and home to start working to pay for the next blowout. Our schedule was always full and, other than our vacations, my husband and I actually saw very little of each other. The idea of children was never raised -who would look after them? And they’re expensive! If you’d walked up to me on the street in those days and asked what I thought about people who work on the sabbath, I would have laughed and said I work every Sunday and what’s wrong with that? Sadly, I would not have even realized that the sabbath is on Saturday.

My grandmother’s new testament lay in the bottom of a box of books I was intending to lug down to the curb for recycling when I had the time. Then one Saturday, as I was nursing a hangover and my husband was off at a baseball game, the phone rang. My grandmother had passed away. I wasn’t expecting the news to affect me that deeply, but something deep inside was urging me to honor her memory. I rummaged through the box and pulled out her new testament and started leafing through pages. I never would have thought that I’d be spending that Saturday bible reading. Over the course of the day, I continued to read, then reached out to learn more. I poured over websites, including www.ucg.org, desperate for information about the new covenant. I realized how hollow I felt for having abandoned my faith and how empty my life was in its pursuit of dollars and distractions.

I now think of that Saturday as the first time I observed the sabbath.